iCare Now
by twowritehands
Summary: Being fatherless was supposed to be what they had in common. Now she knew her dad and he didn't know his. That wasn't okay. SEDDIE Freddie gets answers about his mysterious origin, meanwhile Sam lets him in on her secrets. Rated T PLUS
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: iCan't Stop Looking**

_Disclaimer: don't own the iCarlies_

**A/N: This fic is a first for twowritehands in that it is completely closed on one character. It was a challenge but tons of fun at the same time. Tell us what you think in a review! Also, the storyline ****disregards iParty With Victorious and the previews for the upcoming episodes following iOMG :)**

Freddie sat crisscross applesauce in the middle of the iCarly studio, attempting a magic trick—or what would amount to one. On the floor in front of him was a cardboard box. With a glue gun, he meticulously dotted the back of tiny cutout branches and leaves and stuck them to a cardboard tree trunk, his genealogy project. While other students would just have a poster board with a boring family tree traced on, Freddie would have a _three-dimensional_ model tree. But not just any 3-D tree; an _optical illusion_. Using math he was going to make a bunch of perfectly matched lines look like they didn't add up. In doing so he hoped to impress his teacher with smoke and mirrors, thus turning C+ work into B+ material. Ta-da!

It was probably going to be a lot of work for nothing, but it was worth a try. Going above and beyond was too much of a habit to not _try_, but of all the assignments in his career as a model student, this was the first time Freddie felt like he probably wouldn't get a perfect grade.

And it was the first time ever that he didn't really care.

The assignment was to trace his family back as far as possible on both sides and he'd probably only make a B on it, but that would be okay, because he wouldn't be the only person in the class with only half a tree and a blank spot where his father should be.

He thought of Sam and her mother, and the fact that he'd never even heard the words "my dad" from Sam's lips.

Hmm. Sam's lips.

He didn't realize he was smiling as he pressed little four pronged leaves to the cardboard. (His family tree was a maple. Carly had told him that he had to pick a specific species, because it was detail like that that was the difference between winners and losers. Hers was an Oak.)

Nearby, Carly was laying flat on her back in the floor, reading print outs she got from that family ancestry website, Where'd'ya Come From Dot Com. She had her ankles crossed and shook her foot in time to the music of Cuddle Fish, which blasted loudly from the stereo.

Gibby was in the audience seats built to look like a car. He was reclined with his legs up over the dashboard. He was eating pudding, his project abandoned on a nearby card table. He sang along with the lyrics, always taking the back-up bass when he could, which in this song meant a lot of deep throated bellowing with his head back.

Freddie didn't hear the door open or slam, or even notice Sam until her army-green converse, which were mostly swallowed in the ratty ends of her too-long jeans, walked across his work area. He yelled at her, but she didn't hear. She turned down the music and swirled around to look at her friends. She held two plastic Mall-Mart bags filled with DVD boxes.

"What're those?" Carly asked, rolling onto her stomach. Gibby swept his finger around the inside of his pudding cup to get the last bits of pudding and then threw the cup into the trashcan; it went in nothing but bag.

Sam's blue eyes were alight and her smile was genuine with no sarcasm or loathing, showing off her pearly whites. She pulled one of the DVDs out and held it up. "It's every episode of _Cult Busters_ ever made!" she said.

Gibby's large and lanky frame sprang up clumsily, "No way!"

"Yes way!" she laughed. Freddie and Carly frowned at each other. They'd never heard of this show. Sam and Gibby were singing the theme song, if it could be called a theme song. It was more like a string of notes played as the title rolled.

"Badada Badada BOWM. Cult. Busterrrrrrrs!"

Freddie pushed himself to his feet and left his glue stick oozing on the floor. "Cult Busters," he repeated, "What's that?"

Sam rocked onto her heels and rolled up onto her toes, "It's mah dad's show."

That took a second.

"What?" Carly asked, pushing herself into a sitting position on the hardwood floor. Her confused smile was on and shiny from her lip-gloss. Sam was already putting the DVD in as Gibby scoffed, "Sambrose Melancholy's you dad?"

"Yup," Sam answered. Gibby shrugged, "Cool!"

"Sambrose Melancholy?" Carly repeated.

"Yeah," Sam said, "Mom named me and Mel after him."

Just then, the DVD menu began and it showed a man made extremely large by muscle holding a small child's shoulder in one hand, and a gun in the other as they walked away from what looked like suburbia. He wore a three-piece suit tousled by a fight and the kid wore some kind of toga.

"That's your dad?" Carly asked getting to her feet. Her tone echoed Freddie's thoughts. Sam…you have a dad?

"She's got his eyes," Gibby said, "I always thought so—never occurred to me that they might _actually_ be his eyes." He laughed. "Hey so is he in the movie coming out next week?"

Sam wrinkled her nose. "Neh, they wanna do it on location and he wasn't up for it."

Freddie and Carly traded lost looks. Freddie turned to the TV. The DVD menu changed to another shot, a close up of this Sambrose Melancholy—that could _not_ be his real name, Freddie thought—and he saw that Gibby was right, the guy did have Sam's big round blues, the same thick eyelashes, too.

Sam hit play, flopped into a beanbag. Gibby did the same and she took a pudding cup that he offered out of his twelve pack.

"Sam!" Carly shrilled, stepping in front of the screen. Freddie stepped into the space beside her, crossed his arms.

"What?" she asked up at them.

Carly was so flabbergasted by their slacker friend that she looked at Freddie for help. He threw his arms up, "We're your friends! Why didn't you tell us when you found out who your dad was?"

She smirked, "I didn't _find out_. I've always known."

This took a second, too. In it, an electric guitar screamed Badada Badada BOWM and a chorus of people murmured "Cult. Busterrrrrrrs," then a voiceover began about the tragedies of brainwashed cults…

Gibby looked up at his two friends, from Freddie's low eyebrows and dropped jaw to Carly's bland, polite expression of disbelief where she was blinking her eyes slowly. Then he looked over at Sam, "Think you'd better explain that one, Sam."

She sighed, rolled her eyes and hit the pause button. "Why're you all so surprised?"

Freddie shrugged and Carly mirrored him, though they knew exactly why. Sam's mom was the kind of woman that didn't exactly promise that she kept up with that kind of thing. Gibby said it outright, "We always assumed your mother didn't know his name because she's, uh, you know, Fancy."

"Fancy?" Sam echoed with a smirk.

"A stranger waiting on the boulevard," Gibby tried again. She raised her eyebrows.

"A pretty woman," he offered. Sam shrugged, not satisfied with that definition, though everyone knew that she knew what his was saying.

"A hooker!" Carly screeched. "You're mom's a hooker, Sam, everybody knows it!"

If Sam was hurt by this, she didn't show it. She sighed and laid back into the beanbag, stretching out flat as she ripped the top off her pudding cup. Her shirt came up enough to show the peachy flesh of her lower stomach and a thin line of dark pink elastic under her jeans. Freddie noticed despite the gravity of the situation and looked away, swallowing.

Carly, calmed by embarrassment from her loss of temper, pushed her hair behind her ear, crossed her arms, and said in a much kinder voice, "You never talked about your dad before so we always just thought… Well, that she hadn't kept track or something…."

Sam waved a hand, bored, "Nah. She always knew it was Sammy. He sends us child support and mom sends him our school pictures."

"He knows about you?" Gibby asked.

Sam nodded.

Freddie exploded, "So why haven't you ever told us that you're dad was—"He threw his arms at the screen. "_Famous_!"

"First of all," Sam said, becoming a little defensive from Freddie's volume and tone. She stood, poked him hard in the chest. "It's nobody's business. Second of all, I would have told you guys if you'd have asked about him, but you never did, and third of all," She shrugged, dropping the defensive attitude. "I'm not supposed to spread it around."

"Why not?" Gibby asked.

She waved a hand, "Mom's blackmailing five other guys into paying child support."

"WHAT?" Carly and Freddie cried. Sam shrugged, "Hey, they're rich enough to afford it, ashamed enough to pay it. Bills gotta be paid somehow."

This was the first time in seven years that they were talking about Pam Puckett's career choices. Carly, Freddie, and Gibby had found out years ago on accident (a long story) and Sam knew they knew. It was never spoken of and it felt weird to be talking about it now, like some pact was being broken.

"So why tell us now?" Freddie suddenly demanded with venom, which made Carly and Gibby double-look him. "We didn't ask."

Now Sam was really pissed off. She advanced on him and he retreated a few steps. "What's it to you, Benson?" she asked. "I just thought you'd get around to asking eventually because of this dumb project."

"I can't believe you'd keep something like this from us," Carly said. Sam scoffed, "Don't go all soft. It's no big deal."

"I told you about when my mom left!" Carly cried and her voice broke a little as she said it.

Sam's expression softened. "I know," she said. Gibby looked lost, he was still too new to the group to have gotten the story on that. Freddie turned to glower at the hero on the screen with Sam's eyes as Sam hugged Carly.

"Let's just do these stupid projects," Sam groaned, changing the subject. "I need to get a good grade if I wanna graduate." It was senior year, and Sam was surprising her friends by actually caring about her diploma. She was now half-assing her work as opposed to ignoring it completely.

Gibby exclaimed loudly in agreement, hit play, and returned to his card table. Carly picked up her print outs, Sam went to Freddie's laptop to log into Where'd'ya Come From Dot Com for the first time since getting the assignment three days ago, and Freddie snatched up his glue gun and sank back to the floor.

He could feel himself sulking as he went back to work. He knew it was stupid—but he felt betrayed, perhaps more so than Carly.

Sam wasn't supposed to know anything about her dad, like him. He never realized how much that meant to him, to have a friend to share that with, being clueless about dads. And, now, apparently, she'd had a clue all along. Sam had a dad. Sam _knew_ her dad. Sam's dad knew her.

He worked in silence, gluing leaves and names to his mother's side of the tree while his father's side stayed blank. If he stuck the leaves in place more violently than usual, they didn't complain.

Now, instead of the dance tunes of Cuddle Fish to buoy their spirits while they worked, they watched a DVD marathon of _Cult Busters_. Frankly, Freddie wasn't up for it, but he couldn't complain without explaining his disinterest, which he was barely willing to do even to himself, let alone out loud.

These first episodes were old—shot, like, twenty ago, so old they had to be re-digitized to be put on DVD. Freddie was surprised when he glanced up and saw in the opening credits that the same people produced this that did _Celebrities Underwater_. Wow, talk about a broad range of interests, the two shows were nothing alike.

While _Celebs_ was basically a game show that provided opportunities for him to see Selma Hayeck in a bikini underwater, the show that Sam's father starred in was dramatic—and viewer discretion advised. Within five minutes, Freddie understood how he'd never heard of this show. It was the kind of thing that was on late at night (after his bedtime) and on the channels that his mother blocked.

Basically, it was a reality show. Sam's father was a hero described as a True Free Thinker. He infiltrated cults, de-brainwashed as many people as he could, and then got them out safely. It was dangerous work, as most people in a cult would gladly kill if their leader demanded it. The leader always demanded it and Sambrose Melancholy always survived and never lost a man. It was also scripted, but after the first four straight hours of it, that became less obvious.

They swore as they talked about what they called The Situation. (These DVDs were uncensored so there were no tasteful bleeps over the words that made Carly wince) and when they interviewed people they'd rescued from a cult, the victims told horrifying stories filled with sickening details about the brutal violence and abuse of all kinds that they'd suffered.

Carly frequently forgot her work and stared in horror at the screen as the victims told their stories. Freddie heard, too, of course and it made his stomach roll, but he tried to pretend like it wasn't freaking him out, tried to be more like Gibby who watched it all with the casualness of a teen watching _Celebrities Underwater._

Sam had seen every episode at least once so it did not distract her as much as it did the others. Carly kept getting pulled into The Situation on the screen, fascinated despite her terror, and Gibby, though he'd also seen them before, was happy to see them again. Seriously, he seemed unmoved by most of it. It made Freddie wonder if he even understood most of what he was hearing or if he was just that tough-skinned.

Freddie ended up paying less attention to his maple tree or to the TV and more attention to Sam as she worked. She stood at his laptop with one leg bent, the heel of that foot on top of her other foot. Her jeans were tight, and he liked the shapes her legs made. She bit her lip in concentration, too, her finger flicking around the track pad as she searched for her family's lineage. She printed things off and was actually highlighting lines— Sam was _doing_ her homework.

A distracting enough sight in all of its strangeness, never mind how attractive it was.

Freddie shot a glance her way often because he felt like he was looking at a thing that logically had to happen regularly enough but that was rarely, if ever, seen—like something the discovery channel would kill to get footage of. He didn't want to miss it.

Since he was looking at her so much, he noticed every time she realized that a favorite part of an episode was coming up, how she stopped, put her full attention on the screen, often making a comment about how cool it was, or how she would have handled it if she was there. Gibby had a constant refrain of, "It's so cool he's your dad, Sam," which usually came after every verbal or physical bitch slap delivered on the screen. Those were her favorite parts. Every time.

Freddie was taking his time getting his brain around it all. She'd been watching this show for as long as Freddie'd been her friend, and all the while, she'd known it was her father. She knew her father. His name. His face. His job. In Freddie's head, just like that, she went from being the tough girl who didn't need a dad, to the girl who eagerly soaked up every bit of the man that she could get.

Freddie paid enough attention to the screen to realize where Sam got her tough side. The last fifteen minutes of an episode always had a fight with a gun, a knife or iron knuckles versus anyone going to stand in Melancholy's way as he tried to get the children out. He wondered if it was sharing DNA with this guy that made her so violent, or if it was just a natural side effect from watching him with awe in every episode.

Because she did watch him with awe, and Freddie couldn't look away from her as she did.

…

**Seddie on the way so hold onto your pants… 'cos Freddie doesn't. ;-)**


	2. Chapter 2: iConfess

**Chapter 2: iConfess**

They finished the first season of Sam's dad's show, with significantly _less _of their work done than they would have had done otherwise, and called it a night. Freddie was across the hall with his key in the lock (Marissa had a late shift at the hospital) when Sam hurried out of Carly's apartment after him.

"Hey, wait up," she said.

He stopped, turned. He couldn't help the smile that teased her on his lips. Ever since that Lock In back in the tenth grade, and her surprise kiss attack, he never could believe it if she pretended to want to talk with him alone in perfect innocence. Even if ever since then, that was all it ever was.

At the sight of his smile, she rolled her eyes, pushed him. He bumped against his door and regained his balance, remembered how she'd sworn she'd been in a bad place when she'd kissed him and that it wouldn't happen again because she'd sooner kill herself.

"What?" he asked.

She shrugged, hooked a thumb through the long chain of the watch necklace that reached her abdomen. Freddie noticed how long her thumbnail was, how long all of her nails were; built in weapons but feminine at the same time. Classic Sam.

"You seemed really mad about something earlier." She said.

He huffed, shrugged, tried to play it down. He hadn't been mad. Nah, where'd you get that? He'd been _surprised_, like Carly, that was all. But he could see on her face that she didn't believe him. Her eyebrows met over her nose, her blue eyes darted around his face.

He ignored the doubt and questions in her expression, unlocked his door and pushed it open. "See you around, Puckett," he said.

"Got any ham?" she asked instead of returning his goodbye. She pushed passed him and into his dark apartment. Her shoulder actually slid against his chest instead of painfully knocking into him. (A nice change.) She left behind a whiff of dandruff shampoo.

Freddie sighed, looked up at the ceiling and groaned in annoyance. Why did he have to be friends with the girl who was mean to him, kissed him and didn't want him, then invited herself in and ate all his sandwich meat? He went in after her, turned on the living room light, kicked his door closed and tossed his bag into the corner.

Over in the kitchen, Sam was already talking with her head in his fridge, "It never occurred to me that you guys might actually care," she said. He didn't have to ask what she was talking about.

He shoved his fists into his pockets, gave her his most incredulous look, "That makes sense," he said with scathing sarcasm, "We're only your best friends."

Sam resurfaced from the fridge with ham in hand, blue eyes narrowed in loathing, "You're not my best anything, Benson."

He ignored that, went in for the kill. "You knew about him back when we figured out what you're mom does for a living. You knew what conclusion we'd draw about your dad. You could have corrected us anytime since then, but you never did. Why?"

She rolled her eyes, pulled out a wad of ham and bit it in half, asked past it, "Why do you even care?"

"Because it's your DAD!" he barked it, but not on purpose. "He's _clearly_ a big deal to you. But you never shared him with us! Did you think you were somehow being nice to the poor guy who has no buttering CLUE who his dad is by not mentioning it to him that your dad cares enough to send you checks and collect your pictures?"

Sam was too surprised to answer his angry tone with one of her own. She blinked, swallowed her ham, and put down the rest. (Not a time for ham, this was serious.) She looked at the tiles of his kitchen floor as she said, "No."

Angry—but mostly because of how embarrassed he was for losing it like he had—Freddie scoffed and went to his couch. "Whatever, I don't care. Take the rest of that ham and get out. I'm tired."

Freddie turned on the TV to fill the silence as Sam came into the living room, stood there by the couch looking down at him, "Sounds like you care."

"Sam," he looked up at her, trying his hardest to be cool about this. He really didn't want to make a big deal about it—he already had so far, but maybe he could stop.

"Go," he said. "Seriously, it's fine." He returned his attention to the TV, where he finished his channel search by selecting _America Sings_. He was well aware that Sam wasn't leaving. He was well aware she'd abandoned the ham and that meant it was serious, and he didn't want to be serious with Sam right now. He wanted to be alone.

He'd never been upset about his dad before in his life, ever. He'd always thought it was okay that he didn't know. But, now, all of a sudden, it just wasn't okay anymore. It was surprising, and uncomfortable and embarrassing. How could he have not realized it meant this much to him? Why did it? What did it matter? Why couldn't he just drop it instead of making an ass of himself?

Sam sank down onto his coffee table, thumbs hooked back through that chain. She kept her eyes on the timepiece in her fingers as she said, "I didn't tell anyone about my dad, not even you guys, because I was afraid of what anyone might think."

Surprised by the unwarranted confession, Freddie turned down the sound on his TV and frowned, "What, you think finding out that your dad is Sambrose Melancholy would make people think any differently about you? Honestly, we never should have imagined that you came from anyone else!"

She smiled, and then suddenly she was talking. Like, _talking_, not insulting or joking or swearing. "They met at club—not business hours—had a weekend together. When Mom looked him up and told him that she was having twins, he proposed to her."

Freddie smiled because Sam was smiling. It wasn't her triumphant smile or her devious one. It was just a girl smiling. Her eyes met his briefly then she looked away, into a past she hadn't been there to see with her own eyes but that she must have imagined countless times.

"Mom turned him down—don't ask me why. I don't think even she knows. Anyway, he was there when Mel and me were born." She brought her shoulders up to her ears. Her palms were pressed together between her knees. She was happy. She was pretty.

"He sounds like a good guy." Freddie said, his stomach twisting in jealously and anger, and maybe a little bit of something else. "Why wouldn't you want to tell people that?"

"Well because…" she dropped her shoulders. She was deliberately not making eye contact, had abandoned toying with her necklace, was staring instead at her knees as she picked at a fray in her jeans, "everyone knows that my home life isn't…" she motioned around to indicate his apartment, his safe, clean, and well-fed life.

"I was afraid that if anyone knew that we know who my father is, and that he knows about me, then they'd think he doesn't want me, that he abandoned me. Because he must not want me, or else he'd have gotten me out of my mom's house, right?"

That had been the conclusion Freddie had drawn. It made sense—the guy's job couldn't make it easy to raise children. Sam continued, "But the truth is, when Mel and me were ten, he came around to get us. It went to court and everything. They told us to choose which one we wanted to live with. Mel…"

The last wisps of Freddie's anger dissipated as everything about Sam suddenly became like she was two years ago in that courtyard, vulnerable as she lowered her walls and put herself out there. Shortly after that, Freddie had convinced himself that the girl he saw that day had been an illusion, some kind of hallucination from being in school for too long… but here she was, just as he remembered.

Suddenly it was clear to Freddie that for all the effort she put into making people believe otherwise, she worried a lot about what other people thought of her. It made her human to want to be liked, to want to avoid judgments. Especially the ones that hurt, like that her father must not care about her. It almost broke Freddie's heart to think she cared so much that she'd keep the truth, _that she was loved_, to herself.

"… Mel wanted to go but…"Her lip trembled ever so slightly, "But I couldn't leave Mom."

Freddie sat up in surprise. With his elbows on his knees, and hers on her knees in front of him, their faces were suddenly very close. A moment passed in which _America Sings_ came back from commercials with a roaring crowd eager for voting results. Freddie could sense how uncomfortable Sam was for all the revealing she'd just done. He broke the silence between them to return the favor.

"I've always been the boy without a dad," he said. He looked up, met her eye—so blue at this proximity. She looked away. He continued, unable to look away from her thick lashes. "He wasn't just gone, he was never talked about. _Ever_. And it never bothered me because at least I wasn't the only one because _you_ didn't have a dad. For as long as I've known you, Sam we always had at least _that_ in common. You could be cruel to me all you wanted, but at least in being fatherless we were…" With a rush, Freddie realized he was telling a secret, one he hadn't even known he'd had. He laughed as he leaned back into the couch cushions, pushed on his eyes, "Equals or something."

He shook his head, feeling like the whole idea was stupid and he was setting himself up for severe teasing from her for even saying it aloud. He sighed, "It just got to me that it was all some kind of lie or something. I'm sorry. It's good that your dad cares. I'm happy for you, Sam."

A long silence followed. Man, telling secrets was embarrassing. He wished he hadn't said anything. When he finally got the nerve to look at her, he found she was looking at him strangely. He felt like a bug caught between her forefinger and thumb. She was going to squish him any minute now. He was so certain of it that when she moved, he flinched away from her fists, but they weren't swinging. She was just moving over to the couch.

Her lips were on his before she was even properly seated next to him.

Instinct, practice (if two times kissing her could be called practice) and maybe just a few daydreams about it had him kissing her back. Her lips were soft—and natural tasting, none of the popular lip-glosses his last few girlfriends had worn. His fingers slid into her hair, which was so silky he would have sworn that some other girl had slipped in to take her place once he'd closed his eyes because surely Sam, who skipped showers and didn't brush her hair regularly, didn't have hair this amazing.

But it was Sam, because her tongue tasted like ham.

When she broke the kiss, he was afraid again—here came the beating. But she just smiled at him and kissed him again, this time with enough force to push him sideways into a prone position with her weight pressing her breasts into his chest.

Um, okay. Yeah. Just go with it.

He'd made out with girls before. But none of them had been his friend Sam who frequently distracted him with her legs and bendiness as she splayed herself out over Carly's couches for naps. Sam, who took it one further than physical attraction by kissing him one day and making him bleed the next and thus confusing him to the point where he didn't feel like thinking about any other girls until he had this one figured out. His friend Sam, who he found was strong with muscle in some places and wonderfully soft in others as she let him put his hands all over her.

And, man, was he the biggest nub ever as he found himself inexplicably breaking his lips from hers to ask, "What are we doing?"

"Shut up, you'll ruin it," she said.

"Ruin what?" he asked and she grabbed a hank of his hair and twisted. He cried out like a girl and she let him go, smiled at him with her blue eyes sparkling with light. Whoa, he'd seen that sparkle before, but never at this proximity, never as he lay on his back and she lay on top of him. On his couch. Home alone.

Her face was different with gravity pulling it down in ways that it didn't do when she stood upright. He was so caught up in noticing the differences of her face like this that he forgot about kissing—until she kissed him again. This kiss was deep and coming right after the string of realizations he'd had five seconds ago about being home alone and stuff, well, it put Freddie in trouble.

He tried his best to handle it—to keep control so that the kissing didn't have to stop. But, man, he really was a nub wasn't he? He failed miserably. She tensed when she noticed that the thing he wasn't controlling.

In his predicament, there wasn't a lot of room for thought in his head save for the one thing, but his brain had evolved into having one whole part devoted to surviving Sam and that part waited for the pain to come. For Sam to leap up, insulted or grossed out, and begin pummeling him.

That never came. What came instead was the brief lull in kisses that was her wiggling out of all of her bottoms—like, _all_ of her bottoms. No frayed jeans. No dark pink boy shorts. No bottoms but her natural one. Freddie lost his breath.

Then he lost his pants.

…

It was over.

Not that he noticed anything but a few key things there in the beginning, but when it started, _America Sings_ was going to commercial. It was not yet back from that same commercial break and Sam was buttoning jeans back over pink underwear. He wasn't missing that she seemed wholly—for lack of a better word—_unflustered_. As if she'd just gotten up from a nap or something serene not involving exercise.

Unable to stop himself, he made the comments that were surely on the tip of her tongue. Part of him was trying to apologize, but most of him was trying to make a preemptive strike against himself so that the verbal abuse could begin (and thus end) sooner. But she scoffed, rolled her eyes.

"Stop acting like you blew your only chance, Benson," she said. She stood, looked down at him with that glint in her eye. "You'll have lots of chances to get the hang of it."

What she meant by that wasn't clear—lots of chances with other girls, or just with her?—but either way, it was a compliment.

She hooked her thumbs through her chain, rocked onto her heels as she drew in a deep breath, then rolled up onto her toes as she released it. For a second she looked like she might say something, but instead she just turned and headed for the door. She paused half way there.

Freddie's breath caught, (Was this the part where the pain began? Or would there be more? God, please, let it be more!) But then she just went to the kitchen and got the rest of that ham. She was back to the door when Freddie couldn't stand it anymore—it felt wrong not to say something.

"Hey, Sam," he said. She opened the door and looked back at him.

He smiled, "You're beautiful."

She rolled her eyes and a moment later was gone behind his shut front door. He sank back on the couch cushions.

_What_?

**Review—if you're a Seddie fan, you MUST have comments. We know you do. You know you do. So do.**


	3. Chapter 3: iNeed A Translator

**Chapter 3: iNeed A Translator**

Given the events of the night, and his subsequent confusion, it was the next morning before Freddie even recalled the reason why Sam had been in his apartment in the first place. Because she had a dad, and he didn't, and she could tell that it bothered him.

It bothered him.

Try as he might to pretend otherwise, it did. If Sam knew who her dad was—with a mom like _Pam_. How was it possible that he, with a mom like _Marissa_, didn't know? It just didn't make sense.

"Hey, mom," he said groggily when he found her in the kitchen. It was a Saturday morning, but he wasn't one to sleep in. Marissa never allowed him to. She was already dressed for the day, bright eyed and energetic as she always was. He kissed her cheek as she handed him a bowl of cheerios.

"Morning, Freddie," she said, "Did you get a lot of work done at that girl's place?" Mom refused to call Carly by name.

"Yup," Freddie answered even as he recalled spending most of it looking at Sam or her dad.

"Did you get something real to eat for dinner?"

They'd snacked on nachos and pudding while watching _Cult Busters_.

"Yup,"

"Did you get to bed on time?"

He'd stayed up replaying what had happened on the couch until two in the morning.

"Yup."

"Good," she sank down into the chair opposite him at the kitchen table, a bowl of oatmeal in front of her. He hadn't mentioned it to her, and had had no plans to do so, but now things were different. He broke the silence.

"My history project is a genealogy thing. We have to make a family tree." He watched her closely. If she was onto him, she didn't show it. She ate her oatmeal, nodded, said it sounded like fun. He took a deep breath and went for it.

"I need to know who my dad is to do it properly."

She glanced up from her food, "You don't have a dad, Fredward."

"Of course I do." He said, "I know how babies are made mom."

Holy Chiz, did he know.

Marissa paused, drew in a steady breath, met his eye. "You. Don't. Have. One." she actually shook with the intensity with which she said it, her eyes flashed with that crazy woman fire that meant Freddie ought to drop it. But he couldn't.

"Even if you were artificially inseminated," he found himself saying, "you'd have at least some kind of ID number or something that I can take to the sperm bank and if the donor said its okay, I could find out his name and stuff!"

"You're all mine, Freddie!" she said rather shrilly. Freddie's ears went hot first, and then the yelling began.

…

Freddie stormed straight into Carly's apartment without knocking, slamming the door behind him on his mother's shrill voice screaming after him, "Yes I can! I am your MOTHER!"

"CRAZY!" he bellowed back at her.

Though it was earlier than most people their age ever saw, Carly was up, too. She never slept in when there was a big school project in the works. She was in the kitchen, still in pajamas, and halfway to the table holding a bowl of cereal. She looked bewildered and slightly amused—what was it this time? Also in the kitchen, sitting at the table, was Sam.

Freddie's abrupt stop upon seeing her ruined any plan he had of playing it cool next time he saw her. She was in an over-sized t-shirt and shorts, some of Carly's. Her hair was tousled from sleep. She was practically asleep sitting up. She was beautiful.

He gulped.

"Morning," he said. He meant it to be to the room in general but he was only looking at Sam. Carly's smile as she glanced between them said it all. When she looked at him, her dark eyes gave him the once over and her grin was far too knowing. Sam glanced up from her pancakes and groggily gave him the nod, "Sup, Fred-Quick?"

"Sam!" Carly cried under her breath. Freddie's stomach dropped. So much for secrets—but of course Sam wouldn't have missed the opportunity to embarrass him.

Freddie's blood was already boiling from his shouting match with his mother. The unexpected sight of sleepy-head-pajama-wearing Sam had momentarily cooled it, but her comment pushed him back into the heat. He pointed at her, bellowed, "Watch it, Puckett! I'm not in the mood!"

Sam was surprised, and perhaps a little impressed, by his response. It visibly woke her up a little bit. He was surprised himself. He never would have believed it if someone had told him that he'd lose his virginity and then shout savagely at the girl the very next time he saw her. Sam stood, "Whoa, chill. What's up?"

Carly pushed her hair behind her ear, smirked "Did your mom, like, find out?"

"No," Freddie said darkly. "I asked her about my dad."

"And?" Sam asked.

"Nothing," he growled. "She won't tell me a single thing—she's expecting me to believe the old stork story or something!" He flopped down onto the couch and stared darkly at the blank TV screen.

"Lemme go talk to the broad," Sam said with a scoff. She headed for the door, but Carly caught her arm.

"Freddie doesn't want you to beat up his mother, Sam."

Sam actually looked down at Freddie for conformation on that. Once he might have been offended she would even think it, but he'd learned that Sam only knew how to handle things in her way. She meant it nicely enough. He lifted one corner of his mouth in appreciation, but shook his head.

"She must have told you _something_ over the years," Carly said, in an attempt to mediate the situation. Be fair, get both sides of the argument, that was Carly's go-to for this kind of thing.

Freddie shook his head, then added, "All I know was that she was married to him. But Benson isn't his name, it's her maiden name. She went back to it after he left."

"There you go—you know he left." Carly said.

"Of course he left," Freddie fairly moaned. He threw an arm in the direction of his apartment, "No one in their right mind would stay with her!"

"Who would have married her in the first place?" Sam asked.

"I'm sure she was nice when she was younger." Carly said, but her smirk said otherwise. "She's not much older than Spencer. Think about it—she would have been about our age when she had Freddie."

"So go through her high school year book." Sam said with a shrug, "Maybe there's a nub in there that looks like you,"

"She didn't go to high school. Her family was the Fencin' Bensons, remember?" Freddie said, "They were all homeschooled on the road with the circus."

"So your dad's a circus freak," Sam smirked. "That makes sense."

Freddie couldn't believe he ever thought she might treat him differently after last night. She plopped down onto her back on the couch next to him and stretched her legs out across his lap. They were bare and smooth and she didn't mind when he eventually put his hands on her shins.

Okay. Cool.

"Nah, I already asked Aunt Jessica about it," Freddie said through a grin as he looked over at Sam. "She says mom had taste enough to _avoid_ the freaks."

Sam grinned back. Carly cleared her throat. Sam kicked Freddie in the ribs. She stood on the cushion beside him, going over the back of the couch on her way to the stairs. He doubled over in pain, sinking his face into the cushions to smother his cries.

"I gotta go," she was saying, "Mom needs a ride to her doctor's appointment."

"Her doctor's appointment," Carly echoed—all concern—as she followed her. "What's wrong with her?"

"Nothing, it's just more plastic surgery."

"Oh."

Freddie sat up, and, still massaging his ribs, shouted after her, "You might have broken my ribs!"

"Deal with it!" she shouted back from the top of the stairs.

Then he was alone in the living room. Spencer emerged from the hallway in duckie boxers and an open robe. "Dude," he said when he saw Freddie on his couch, "Waddup with all the yelling so early?"

"Sorry," Freddie said. Spencer yawned hugely, and returned to his room.

Freddie's rib cage where she'd sunk her heel was really smarting, but his mind returned to thoughts of his mysterious father. He wouldn't have been a classmate of Marissa's. He hadn't been part of the circus, either, and anyway, mom had left the circus and fencing behind to work for Red Cross when she was just sixteen. So she must have met him then.

Carly and Sam knew better than their guesses. Like anyone who knew Freddie, they knew that the coolest thing about him was that he'd been born in Venezuela and spent the first six years of his life there, but they tended to forget it. He couldn't blame them, since even he couldn't really remember it.

If he thought really hard about it, he could conjure memories of _Sesame Street_ in Spanish and being yelled at for peeling white paint from the walls and possibly getting lead poisoning for it. He didn't know if the image of goats in muddy streets was his imagination or not, but he knew that Spanish came far too easily for him as a direct result of exposure to it for so long, so young.

Maybe his mom went to South America because she met a guy in the audience who asked her to go there with him… Maybe they got married but then he left before he even knew he had a son on the way.

Freddie liked to think of it that way—that his father had left not knowing he had a baby on the way. He didn't like to think that he'd been abandoned to suffer his mother alone on purpose. But maybe he had, and maybe that was why she didn't want to talk about him.

Sam bounced back down the stairs and bounded over the back of the couch, sitting beside him, with plenty of space between them, he noticed. She was back in the same clothes she'd been wearing yesterday. He twisted around. There was no Carly on her way down after her.

"She says we need to talk," Sam said. She didn't meet his eye as she said it.

"About last night?" he asked.

She smirked, looked at him. Her blue eyes were filled with devious delight, "I told her there wasn't much to talk about."

He laughed, despite himself. He'd expected this abuse directly after and when it hadn't come, he'd somehow thought it never would. He pressed on his eyes. He should have known. "I still can't believe it happened," he admitted.

There was a pause in the place Sam was supposed to say something. Then she stood, "Well, there. Now she can't say we didn't talk about it."

"Wait," he said, "What does it mean?"

"What does what mean?"

"We're," he shrugged, "Together now, right?"

She laughed, rolled her eyes and headed for the door. "Quit being such a girl, Benson."

"But—" he began but then she was gone.

_What_?

…

Freddie sought Carly out after Sam left. She was sitting at her vanity table, her massive hair dryer on and whipping her dark hair back like she was on a motorcycle or something. She switched it off upon seeing him in her doorway behind her on her screen.

She turned, smiling knowingly again. "And?"

Freddie sighed. "And what?"

"Did you guys talk?"

"Kinda."

Carly slumped, scoffed. Freddie entered the room, sat on her couch. "Are we together, or what?"

"It's Sam," Carly said with a shrug.

Freddie groaned, loudly. He fell back onto the cushions and pressed on his eyes again. "What does that _mean_?"

"It means that we don't know because she doesn't know." Carly said. Freddie sat up and blinked stars from his eyes. He looked at Carly who was putting on foundation as she continued explaining, "She kicked you earlier because she didn't know if it was okay for you to grin at her like that."

Freddie laughed hollowly. "This is perfect! I slept with a girl who I need some other girl to translate for me."

"You don't need me to translate," Carly laughed. "It's Sam! You know her as well as I do. You're just—being a _nub_."

"Carly!" he never thought he'd hear it from her. She shrugged. "Hey, statistically, it's bound to be right every now and then when someone calls you that."

"Thanks," Freddie said drily.

"Listen, I think I know what kind of girl you always imagined it would be with," Carly said as she opened her lip-gloss. Her eye met his on her screen and he looked away. She smeared pina colada on her lips and continued, "But newsflash, it didn't happen that way. You picked Sam. Now stop expecting me-things out of her and start expecting Sam-things."

It was the most direct and unforgiving thing he'd ever heard from Carly. He didn't like it. He wanted always-kind-and-understanding-and-on-his-side-Carly back.

She turned to face him directly, made shooing motions. "Go! Help her figure out what she wants!"

But he didn't do that. He went home and hid in his room instead. Sam was driving her mom to the doctor, anyway, so he couldn't obey Carly's command to step up and be a man, even if he wanted to. The fact that hours later when she was probably back, yet he still stayed in his room, he chose to ignore in favor of brooding over how unfair life was for taking away his dad and making relationships complicated.

Then his mom was knocking on his bedroom door.

"Freddie, I'm leaving." She was on her way to an Aggressive Parenting Conference. Freddie's first instinct was to bark "Good!" but he didn't. Then he thought he'd just ignore her. But he didn't. She was crazy, but she was his mom. He got up and opened the door, gave her a hug and wished her a safe journey.

She looked up into his eyes (she really had to look up now that he was senior, granted it wasn't like she had to crane her neck or anything. But still, it made him feel less like a child when her line of sight tilted up to meet his and he wasn't even wearing elevated shoes.) For a moment, he thought she might say something. But she just gave him a smile and reminded him not to leave the stove on when he heated his lasagna for supper that night.

…

He'd just locked the door behind Marissa, as he was supposed to, when his phone chimed that he had a text from Sam. He unlocked it.

_Mom is freaking out on me. No money for a cab. Don't want to walk at night on my own. Come pick me up?_

She chose to call him instead of Carly. Though he had ideas about it, he wondered why exactly. She could have called Carly for a ride. Carly was the one that always helped her deal with her mom, anyway. Sure he had a crazy mom, too, but it was always girl stuff she and Pam were fighting about, nothing he knew how to deal with.

Regardless, he texted back that he was on his way, gave his mom time to ride away in her cab, and then called for one of his own.

…

Freddie found her waiting on the stoop of her building. She didn't hop up when the cab pulled in, just sat there looking at him, so he paid the fair and joined her on the top step.

"What's up?" he asked.

She rolled her eyes, "drunk."

"Oh," he didn't know what else to say. There was a moment when he expected her to stand so that they could be on their way back to Bushwell Plaza, where she would camp at Carly's like she usually did. But she didn't move. It occurred to him that she might not be able to go to Carly's. He sat beside her.

"Um, why didn't you call Carly?"

Sam waved a hand lazily, "Don't want to hear it."

"Hear what?"

Sam sighed, "Judgments."

"Carly isn't judgmental." Freddie said surprised.

"She doesn't mean to be, but she is." Sam said with a shrug, like it was no big deal. Freddie scoffed.

"I doubt it, what has she ever judged you about?"

Sam raised her eyebrows. It occurred to him for the first time that Carly might not have taken it lightly when Sam recounted what had happened when _America Sings_ went to commercials. After all, it was Carly, who was the shining example of a girl who would do it the way he'd always expected it would be, all romantically and eternally in love and stuff. How could she be okay with it that her friend—make that _friends_, plural—took the other road, really?

He sighed. He recalled the last time he'd spoken to her. She hadn't been judgmental then. Maybe a little snippy, though. Now he knew why. He appreciated that she was trying to suspend judgments, but Sam was right. When something went against Carly's core, it was obvious no matter how polite she was about it.

Sam broke the silence. "You know—in a weird way—you're kind of lucky."

"How?" he asked confused.

She shrugged, looked away. "If you don't know who your dad is… you can't know how much better it would be to live with him."

"Sure I can."

"You can hope," she laughed, "But that's all you can do because you never actually met the guy, or even seen a picture of him. That's different than _knowing_ that your dad is cool and responsible and sober."

"You did choose to stay with your mom," he said, not meaning to rub it in her face or anything, just trying to help her remember that she loved her mother enough for her lip to tremble as she talked about it last night.

She sighed. "I know."

Freddie shrugged, asked timidly, "…Do you regret that?"

Her eyes met his, "Sometimes," she admitted then looked away again. "But mostly, no. I wouldn't have you and Carly for friends if I'd gone to live with him."

Freddie couldn't help his grin, it was so big it made his ears wiggle. "I'm your friend, huh?"

She pushed her shoulder into his. "I know I don't say it enough, but, yeah you are."

There was a moment in which his eyes caught the sight of her eyelashes again. He particularly liked the bottom ones, so little and delicate looking, so precisely spaced. He swallowed, "…Is that all?"

She drew in a deep breath, wouldn't meet his eye. "Of course not," she breathed and it didn't sound like Sam. Well, it did, but it didn't.

Freddie watched her, waiting for her to look at him. She kept her eyes on the toes of her converse for a moment or two then glanced up and when she saw that he was watching with a new smile, she looked away—then punched him in the arm.

He clenched his teeth rather than shout about it, remembering what Carly said about why she'd kicked him. He hated himself for not seeing it on his own. It was so obvious.

Sam always knew who she was and what she wanted —but all of this was just as knew to her as it was to him, so she didn't yet know who she was or what she wanted for a love life. Which meant it was going to be hit or miss for a while until she figured it out.

"It means a lot to me, Sam," he said as he messaged the pain from his arm, "What happened last night."

Sam scoffed, looked away with a roll of her eyes. "Quit being such a nub about it." But she was smiling. With her eyes back on her toes, she pushed her shoulder into his again, suddenly laughed. Freddie realized that Carly was right—he didn't need a translator with Sam. He knew what her shove meant: it meant a lot to her, too.

There was a fifty-fifty chance he would be punched in the throat for it, but he put his arm around her. There was a moment when it could have gone either way, but then she leaned into him. He breathed out audibly. She laughed. A moment later, she pulled away from him and hopped down from the stoop. She was his friend Sam again, like nothing had ever happened.

"It's cold out here," she said. He wished he had a jacket he could give her. Sam looked up at the door to her building longingly. Like him, she wanted to be in the warm and dry. But Carly's place was out, apparently.

"Wanna come over and eat some lasagna?" he asked, having a divine revelation that she totally could because there was no one else at home.

"No thanks," she laughed. "I'm not avoiding one crazy mom to put up with another."

"Mom's in Fresno," he said with a shrug. Her laughter stopped. Her eye met his. He blushed and looked away. She laughed again. "Sure."

**Seddie alone at his place AGAIN coming up. We all know you'll keep reading, but if you have a comment on this chapter how about leaving it first?**


	4. Chapter 4: iSeek Advice

**Chapter 4: iSeek Advice**

Freddie wondered if Sam was as acutely aware that they were alone in his apartment again as he was. He tried to keep his eyes from darting over to the couch as much as they wanted to as he recalled what had happened there. He didn't want her to think he expected anything…

He realized that for all the communicating they'd done on her stoop, he still wasn't sure if she wanted more of him. She'd agreed it meant a lot to her, but of course it did, it was her first time… She'd let him put his arm around her, but maybe it was just as a friend-who-she-shared-something-with thing, like that kiss on the balcony all those years ago had been…

Baby steps, he thought. Just stay her friend until the rest is figured out. So he kept the conversation to topics they talked about all the time: school rumors, music, upcoming things on iCarly, and to his relief, Sam seemed content to follow his lead. They soon fell into an argument about weather or not lasagna would be better if it was made with ham instead of beef.

She won. Not through skills of debate, but by stabbing him with her fork. She'd turned it, stabbed him with the blunt grip instead of the prongs. At first, he'd thought she'd done it to be nice, but then she kept eating and he realized she just hadn't wanted to get his blood all over her fork.

He finished his lasagna first and when she scooped the last of her second helping into her mouth, he took her plate to the sink to rinse it. She hopped up and parked it on the counter beside the sink.

"I think you should ask your mom about your dad again," she said. He was thrown by the sudden subject change, as well as her opinion.

"Why?" he asked.

She shrugged. "You're seventeen. She can't protect you forever."

Freddie sighed, "Try telling her that."

"I will if you want me to," she said and when he looked up at her, she held up her hands, "No hitting—unless she asks for it."

Freddie smirked. "Thanks, but this is something between her and me."

Sam sighed, "Whatever."

He chuckled, "Thanks for offering, though. It's sweet of you."

He put the plug in the sink and turned the tap on full blast. Might as well do the dishes now. He reached across her to grab the soap. She caught his hand in both of hers. He looked up at her, for a moment not catching on, but a second later, he realized she was trying something. He stood perfectly still, in case she decided she didn't like it—whatever it was.

Her hands warmed his as she caressed it. It was like she hadn't ever seen a hand before, the way she was studying it. He realized how dainty hers looked in comparison and felt manly. She ran her fingers over his knuckles, long nails trailing softly, sending shivers through him. She turned his hand over to look at his palm. "Not a lot of people say I'm sweet," she admitted softly.

"You usually aren't," he replied.

She lifted her gaze to meet his, smirked, "You bring out the worst in me, I guess."

He laughed. She was still holding his hand. He closed his fingers on hers. It struck Freddie that they'd never held hands before. They'd kissed. They'd slept together, but they'd never just held hands. Sam certainly was doing a fine job at scrambling the way he always thought things would be. He laughed at the thought.

"What?" she asked.

He shrugged, shook his head with a lopsided smile. "Nothing."

She narrowed her eyes like she didn't know if she should believe him. In the second that Freddie was certain she would hit him, her eyes popped wide and she squealed, danced along the counter and hopped off.

Freddie had forgotten the tap, and the sink had overflowed onto the counter and soaked her bottom. He slapped the water off, pulled the plug, apologizing. But she was laughing. She waved a hand, "Don't worry about it, nub."

Emboldened by her laughter, he found himself replying, "Well, I guess I've done stupider things on a date."

He could tell she was surprised to hear this was a date—he was almost as surprised himself. He braced for insult and injury as she stepped closer. But she just stepped closer.

Okay, just go with it.

As he had before, he stood perfectly still. He felt a little like some guy on the nature channel, standing super still as the dangerous but timid wild animal inched closer. She put a hand to his cheek, slid her fingers into the hair at the back of his neck, and pulled his face close to hers. For a moment, they stood in the middle of his kitchen with just mingled breath between them. This close and she couldn't make up her mind. Maybe she was just trying to kill him.

Then she was kissing him.

It tasted like lasagna this time, and her hair was just as soft as before. He liked how his fingers glided through it as he pushed it from her face, combed it behind her ear. He liked how her jaw fit between his hands, her ears sliding in between his fingers. He liked that she held him by the front of his shirt, so that he couldn't pull away even if he wanted to.

Though a part of him fought it every inch of the way, Freddie was determined to remain in control this time. He didn't want to sleep with her _every_ time she kissed him when they were alone. He had a horrifying feeling of certainty that if he did, and she later realized she didn't want to be that girl, she would blame it all on him and kill him.

Baby steps. Kisses were fine for now. Safe.

The kissing went on for a while, and it was, to use the true meaning of the word, _awesome_. Last night, after the pants had gone, there hadn't been a lot of deep kisses—he'd been preoccupied focusing on other things. He really liked it when her hands slid around to his back, then down to his lower back and then even further to his bottom.

Suddenly, Sam broke away and laced her fingers with his, and they were walking to his room. Through the living room, Freddie was at war with himself to stop. At his bedroom door, though, he decided being murdered by Sam for sleeping with her when she asked, well, there were worst ways to die young.

He was committed to doing it, but, seriously, was he incapable of not being a nub about it? They were on his bed. She was shirtless. He was shirtless. Jeans were gone, and he was just about to start kissing her again when he suddenly pulled back. "Wait,"

"What now?"

"I need to know why."

She laughed. He was aware of how girly it was, but if he didn't get answers, he would only torture himself about it later. He waited for one. She laughed with a shrug, "Why what?"

"Why now?" he asked and was sorry to hear that it was a whine. "Why all of a sudden do you want to sleep with me?"

She averted her gaze, smiled as she said, "I wouldn't call it all of a sudden."

He gulped. That was awesome. She went to kiss him once more and he let her, but then broke away again. "Wait—sorry—But why now, then? What changed?"

She laughed, rolled her eyes. "It's the equals thing, alright?"

He frowned and she continued, "You said you always thought we were equals and you were obviously upset when you thought we weren't."

"That's it?" he asked. "That's the only reason why you're doing this?"

"Well, you're one of my best friends, and I can trust you and—well, you're really cute." To his utter surprise, she gushed that last bit. She _gushed_ it. Like a girly-girl.

How awesome could one night get?

"I am?" he asked, so surprised his voice cracked. Nubbing it up again.

"Yeah," she pushed him down onto his pillows with enough force to knock the breath out of him, and kissed him. "You're also a really good kisser."

He'd always imagined girls saying it, started to think it would never happen. He wondered what else he could get her to do that he'd always imagined.

So enough talking.

…

He wasn't a virgin anymore. For the first time he was really starting to get it, finally. Two times too late but still. He had started to think he would never believe it, but he was believing it now. Maybe it was because this time he had been confident about what to do, maybe because this time the angles and motions hadn't felt awkward, maybe because this time lasted longer and was filled with deeper kisses.

But mostly maybe because they were both pretending like she wasn't crying.

She totally was. Sam was crying. She was smiling, giggling, and crying, and it was all for him. Holy chiz. She was so beautiful like this, with her guard down, really down, like, _all the way_, and her cheeks were all red, and her eyes sparkling, and she looked shy—embarrassed. For as long as he lived Freddie never thought he would embarrass Sam Puckett. Probably because he'd never thought he'd rock her world horizontally, which he totally just did, another reason why this time was different from the last.

There was a divide between them on the mattress, which was weird considering how close they'd just been; as close as it got, really. Like, really.

Holy chiz.

He laughed, buried his face in his pillow, and then lifted it to peek at her. She was smiling with her tongue between her teeth. His eyes met her blue where tears were still brimming. She reached out and gave him a shove, hid her face.

Freddie was realizing that he was seeing an extra special side of Sam, the secret side of the coin. Tough Sam was a friend that he liked despite the pain she inflicted on him, funny and tomboy and confident. This Other Sam was—she was new and beautiful and he thought… he thought he might…

Could he be in love?

Freddie heard a lot about it in songs and movies, but he found it hard to take advice from entertainment industries, who very well could only be churning out lies for the sake of a profit. So he wasn't exactly sure what it was he was feeling…

He couldn't ask his mom—yeah right. The next closest thing to a parent he had was Carly's brother. He didn't feel like thinking about Carly's brother, though, not with a naked and secret Sam sharing his Galazy Wars sheets with him.

Freddie convinced her to stay with him, to sleep next to him, even though his mom would be home in the early hours and would check in on him, would expect him to get up and get dressed for church. Since neither of them felt like dealing with the fight that it'd be if Marissa found a girl in her son's bed, they set their cell phones to wake them early enough that Sam could slip out and head home.

He liked that he had someone to talk to even after the lights went out. He liked her head on his arm, and the way she didn't whisper just because the lights were out but that she _did_ whisper when she said certain things, like thanks for letting her stay because she didn't want to deal with her mom right now, or that she couldn't believe she was having this much fun with a nub…

Frankly, he couldn't believe it, either.

…

Freddie woke to find that he'd slept through the alarms and that Sam had left without waking him. The sounds of his mother making breakfast were what woke him. He sat up, trying not to feel as cheap as waking up to find Sam gone without a trace was making him feel. He had just found his phone and a text message waiting there when his mom stuck her head in his open door.

"Oh, good your up," she said, "Get ready for church," and then she was gone. He unlocked the message from Sam. It was a picture that she'd taken of him with her phone. He winced. It was unattractive. He was sound asleep, his face mashed uncomfortably looking in the mattress, his mouth open, nose wrinkled as if in a snort. _You were too cute to wake up._ Some how, even in texts, she managed to have biting sarcasm._ See you later. xxx_

He stared at the three X's and couldn't get them out of his head as he showered and dressed in a nice shirt and his church pants. Texting kisses didn't seem like Sam, but he recalled how beautiful she'd been, all breathless and flushed beside him. That hadn't seemed like Sam, either. But it was.

Suddenly, Freddie felt all the same things he had the night before and he thought maybe he could ask the pastor what love was, but then upon seeing him, decided against it. He and the guy weren't close, had never actually spoken one-on-one before, and so he'd probably be saddled with some generic quote from the bible as an answer.

Not for the first time, Freddie wished with all his heart—even shot a few prayers about it Upstairs—that he could find and get to know his father. He wanted someone he could go to when he had questions. Everything recently happening between him and Sam had left him with lots of them. Feeling hopeless, because prayer and stuff had never really come easily to him, he told himself that he'd probably figure it all out on his own, given time, and then tried to have some patience.

He went over to the Shay apartment after getting out of his church clothes.

Sam was there, looking for all the world like the same old lazy bully she'd always been. She gave him a smile when she saw him, blue eyes lighting up, but the moment others were looking, she started ignoring him. He wouldn't let himself be hurt by that, reminded himself that she was still figuring things out. Not unlike himself, who wondered if the others would notice if he got Spencer to step away in private with him so they could talk…

Spencer was cleaning up a mess he'd made trying to make an automatic soda can opener. Gibby was on the couch beside Sam, eating popcorn and Carly was making more. It wasn't long before Freddie heard that a disk of _Cult Busters_ had been spinning in the Shay's dvd-player constantly since the day before. Though it was crude and intense, something about it appealed to Carly enough that she'd forgone her usual innocence-preservation-techniques of avoiding such graphic things and was obsessed.

Spencer had no qualms with uncensored stuff, so long as there wasn't spurting blood. He'd known about the show since it first started, didn't watch it because it was stupid, but learning that the dude was Sam's dad, he'd agreed to give it another chance. After a few episodes, he stopped flinching when the blood spurted and joined Gibby in the refrain of "It's so awesome he's your dad, Sam!"

It put a twist inside Freddie every time someone said that. He didn't know if he liked dads being an open topic of discussion in this group all of the sudden, or how one entire episode was ignored thanks to a debate over which was cooler: free-thinkers, colonels, or truck-drivers. Gibby's dad drove an eighteen-wheeler, how was that cooler than driving a submarine? Not as cool as saving people from brainwashing power-freaks; but way cooler than a question mark. It made Freddie feel like he didn't belong.

Carly had been sensitive to that in the beginning, had kept her mouth shut when the others revered the cool father of their friend, but then Freddie mastered the act of pretending like it didn't bother him, and she joined the others in "He is so cool!" Except she didn't say it when Melancholy kicked butt. She tended to say it more when he quoted poetry, or went on emotional spills, or was filmed at his best angle, displaying strong shoulders and a chiseled profile. Weirdly, even then both Gibby and Spencer still concurred.

The poetry was new on Freddie, since they'd been watching without him. They explained that Melancholy started after the second season. Some of it was classic stuff that had different meanings when read in this context, and some of it was written by those he'd saved. They all said things about love—broken love, lost love, the power of love to heal. It was all very pretty but what did it mean? What _was_ love?

With Spencer's excitement over his new soda-can-opener design rubbing off on Gibby, Freddie left with Carly and Sam to go to B.F. Wang's for lunch. Walking with his two friends-that-were-girls-one-of-which-he'd-seen-naked Freddie kept quiet and listened to their jokes. Carly surprised him with a few well-phrased suggestive remarks regarding Sam's new relationship with Freddie.

Sam hit _him_ after every one of them until Freddie literally had to tell Carly to stop talking about it. When he did, it impressed Sam or something, because she smiled at him. A real smile, nothing sarcastic, nothing loathing, something a lot like she'd looked in his room the other night. Freddie realized he didn't have time to figure things out on his own.

He had to ask someone about love, before he said it without thinking or something. He didn't want to tell Sam he loved her and then realize one day that it wasn't love, just crazy hormones or something. That was just another sure-fire way to get himself killed. Even if he got answers and confirmed this wasn't love, he was pretty sure he would say it anyway. He brought the worst out in Sam and she brought the nub out in him. But he'd still like to know.

So he decided that the next time he got his male-role-model alone, he'd ask. Luckily, he didn't have to wait too long. After B.F. Wang's, Sam and Carly were off shopping (Freddie hoped they were at Build-A-Bra. Sam's underwear was fine, but he wouldn't mind seeing her in something that didn't have frayed lace or rips or barbeque sauce stains) and he went back to Bushwell Plaza.

Gibby had left for his weekend job and Spencer had abandoned the soda opener after it caught fire and was now sculpting in the living room. The TV was playing what looked like the latest episode of _Cult Busters_. Melancholy wasn't on-screen so Freddie couldn't determine exactly how many episodes Spencer had watched while they were out, but it looked like a new season.

"Spence?"

"Hey Fred-o, where's Carls?"

He shrugged, "shopping," That was enough of an answer for the artist.

"Can I ask ya somethin'?"

"Yeah sure," Spencer said.

"How do you know when you're in love?"

Spencer froze, turned slowly from a crate of broken cell phones. His eyes were wide. "Um, why do you ask me?"

Freddie shrugged, "I don't have a dad to ask. How do you know if you really love a girl or if—I don't know, you're not just really infatuated?"

Spencer had his lips rolled between his teeth. He sank down on his coffee table. "Okay," he said slowly. He looked around to make sure they were alone in the apartment then turned wide brown eyes on him and said, "What I'm going to say to you, you cannot repeat to Carly."

"Okay," Freddie said with a shrug.

"All the ladies I've been with?" Spencer said, and Freddie nodded, remembering all the girls Spencer ever brought over for dinner. "I wasn't 'in love' with any of them," he did quote marks in the air with _in love_.

Freddie frowned, echoed, "Not with any of them."

"Nope," the artist said, with a shrug. "I've known almost my whole life that love as the world is obsessed with, doesn't exist. Just have fun, live life, and do what feels right."

"Wait," Freddie said, "You're saying you don't believe in love?"

"The only love that's forever is love for yourself and your family,"

"That's kind of depressing,"

Spencer shrugged, "So are broken vows, sloppy divorces and kids left to look after each other."

"We're not talking about marriage," Freddie said, "We're talking about love."

Spencer shrugged, returned to his sculpture, "I told you, I've never been in love."

"Because you don't believe in it."

Spencer drew a deep breath, dropped a hand on his shoulder, "Yup. So I guess you've come to a pretty bad place for advice."

…

Freddie sought out Gibby later that day. He proclaimed himself to be a master of love, after all. Gibby was working at the movie theater, in the projection room. Freddie slipped Wendy at the concession stand five bucks and she let him go up the Employees Only stairs. The projection room was filled with the flickering lights of a police chase on the silver screen below.

"Hey, Gib," Freddie said.

"Yeah?" Gibby sat in a plastic chair tilted back, balancing on the back two legs. He was reading a paperback book that had a shirtless man on the front holding a naked woman in a way that hid all the good stuff. It was a girlie book, but Gibby claimed they were vastly informative.

Freddie kind of thought he just liked to be swept up in the tale of a tortured foreign guy teaching a small town girl how to believe that she was worth being loved or whatever those books were about. Freddie had stumbled on his mother's collection and read the back of one. It was precisely because his mom had them that he never could bring himself to read them.

Gibby folded a page in half long-ways, shut his book, tossed it into a corner, hitched up his pants, and then began preparing the next reel. Freddie closed the door behind him and leaned on it.

"Ever been in love?"

"Sure, at least once a week," the bigger young man winked.

"How do you know?"

"Know what?"

"That you're in love?"

Gibby frowned, chewed on his bottom lip for a moment, then said, "When she's all I can think about when I first wake up and when I go to sleep and all the time in between."

Freddie thought about that and decided it didn't work. Not for love; he thought about Selma Hayek about that much and he couldn't be in love with her.

He arrived home from his talk with Gibby to find his mother all aflutter around the apartment. She was scrubbing everything, and for one horrifying moment he thought it was because she'd somehow found out about what he and Sam had done in his room while she was at that Aggressive Parenting Conference. He feared it would make her want to give him a chemical bath and he hated those; they made his skin all tender and red.

"Mom, what's up?" she whirled, screeched, "FREDDIE!" and grabbed him. Suddenly, she was hauling him down the hallway. She pushed him in his room, shut the door. He heard the dead bolt lock and then the beeping as she set her 45 digit code into the security system.

She was locking him in his room. Seriously? Freddie demanded to know what was going on, but his mother only insisted that she was his mother, and she knew what was best.

"Is this about Sam?" he asked. She did not answer that question. He kicked the door and barked, "Crazy!" Then sighed heavily and resolved to find something in here to do—because he was probably here for a while. He flopped down onto his bed—_the_ bed—and started thinking about Sam. He texted her. She texted back. He blushed.

Out in the hall, with the security system on, Marissa had turned to go when her son had asked, "Is this about Sam?" That'd made her stop. Sam. She knew he was kissing her and getting all kinds of germs from her, but why would she lock him up for that? Then there was a thud as he kicked the door and she heard his angry growl of "Crazy,"

That hurt. Marissa knew her son thought of her like that—she knew how she came off to the world—but would he call her crazy if he knew the truth?

**dun dun DUN!**


	5. Chapter 5: iSneak Out

**Chapter 5: iSneak Out**

Trapped. Well, kind of.

Freddie knew the code his mother used on the alarm system of his room, but he couldn't use it on the keypad in here because it was locked. Only the keypad out there in the hall could let him out. If his mother wanted to keep him from Sam by locking him in his room, she shouldn't have left his phone and computer in here. It was too easy to call Sam and tell her the code. Sam, who could pick the lock on their front door in under fifteen seconds, and would gladly do so.

Once he'd texted her that his mother had left for her shift at the hospital, Sam got to work. Thirty seconds later, his bedroom door was opening with no sirens. Sam was smiling smugly. "Are you the princess in the tower right now or what?"

He wrapped his arms around her, "You rock, Sam."

She gave him a kiss—so casually that for a minute he didn't believe it'd happened—then a shove, "Let's go."

He spent the rest of the evening with Sam at Carly's. Gibby was there, too, and they were watching _Cult Busters_ (of course) while pretending to work on their projects again. As Freddie had suspected, it'd been playing all day because they were up to season four by now.

The theme song was revamped and Melancholy looked older, more refined. Carly giggled at things he did that were not meant to be funny. Freddie traded smirks with Sam behind her back. It was so cute when Carly got a crush. The fact that it was an older man and Sam's father, well, that just made it hilarious.

Freddie liked that Sam sat beside him in the floor to work, that her thigh was against his, that their hands brushed occasionally. Freddie had caught her hand after one such occasion and the two were trading a secret look that their friends weren't noticing when Sam suddenly perked up, turned away toward the TV with an exclamation for everyone to listen to what was coming up.

Melancholy was doing one of his little speeches that he occasionally made about why he did this. He mentioned that he had two beautiful daughters that he knew would always be able to think for themselves, and that he loved them. Carly gushed, Gibby guffawed, repeated, "SO COOL!" and Freddie felt a knot of jealousy.

Her father cared enough to mention her on _television_. His dad could be wishing his son was dead for all he knew. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from saying anything stupid. He really didn't want to make a big deal about it again. Not that he hadn't liked where things had gone the first time but…

Glancing over at Sam, he saw she was preening with pride. She looked from the screen to him, smiling happily with her shoulders up to her ears again. Forgetting his jealousy and anger, he kissed her—for the first time in front of anybody. He had no idea if Sam was a fan of public displays of affection, in fact he was certain she didn't support them, but he just had to kiss her. She was too cute.

Carly laughed "Awe, you guys are cute together."

Sam hit him, literally knocked him out of the kiss, but it was not nearly as hard as she was capable of hitting. She threw a highlighter at their friend, which Carly dodged before triumphantly sticking out her tongue. Freddie knew that any judgments Carly might have had about them were gone; they were doing it right now, after all, now that they were legitimately dating and talking and stuff.

He finished his project first to find that his friends weren't even close because they had two sides to fill in. Carly had hers all the way back to puritan times, but was beginning to complain that she had nothing interesting in her family history. No quirky characters, no scandals, no fun heritage except for a great, great grandmother who was an Alaskan Inuit but they knew little about her.

Though there was nothing more he could do on his project, and it was getting dark out, close to his curfew, Freddie stuck around to help Gibby make Carly see that no one was being graded on how cool their ancestors were. He helped Gibby by cutting out little firefighter helmets. The only cool thing in Gibby's family was that a hundred years ago his grandfather became the fifth son in a row to die on the job as a firefighter. Then he stuck around to see the last episode of season four.

Then Sam wanted him to walk her home. It surprised him. For one thing, he'd somehow been assuming that Sam was going to spend the night with Carly. She usually was whenever she stayed this late. For another thing, walking her home was one of those things he should have already done, having slept with her. Yep. All out of order.

Out in the cool night air, Freddie shoved his fingers into his pockets, then saw Sam's hand hanging there at her side, so he took it. She looked down as his fingers slid between hers. He gave her a lopsided smile. She tamed hers, wouldn't let it grow more than a twitch in the corner of her mouth, and then found more interesting things to look at. But she squeezed his hand back.

"Ooh, wanna get some tacos?" she asked when they turned a corner and saw a Taco Truck open for business. Freddie cringed and shook his head. Ever since getting half his limbs broken by a runaway truck trailing enchiladas, he'd been sort of put-off by Mexican food.

Sam, on the other hand, still bought a ceremonial taco on the anniversary of the event. She'd smacked him on the face with the last one just a month ago.

Freddie groaned. "We can't stop, Sam. Mom get's off in an hour and I gotta get home before she does."

She scoffed, rolled her eyes, but she was smiling, "Or what? She'll die because a seventeen year old isn't in bed by ten?"

"Basically, yeah," Freddie said. He wasn't laughing. His mother's craziness worried him sometimes. He hated it when people said things like that about her but he couldn't defend her because he knew it was true. He stopped walking.

Sam didn't notice his lack of humor—or, if she did, she didn't care. She laughed, let their joined hands stretch between them before stopping and turning. "Okay, now you _have_ to stay out. Let's see if she calls the cops and reports a kidnapping."

Freddie shrugged, trying not to take any of it too personally. He knew he was the only kid in the world who cared about his mother. "She just worries because I'm all she has."

"She should try to get a life." Sam said and to Freddie's surprise, she put her arms up around his neck and stepped close. She bit her bottom lip looking wholly unlike herself, all tender and shy like the night before. "Because you're mine now." she said.

There was a time when he was smaller and weaker and in love with Carly when those words from Sam's mouth would have terrified him, made him picture tables with straps next to tables filled with twisted metal torture devices. Now all it did was make him picture her in his Galaxy Wars sheets. Note to self: get cooler sheets for next time.

He kissed her for a minute before she pulled back with a big sigh and skipped away, crying, "IIIIIIIIIIIIII'm going to get some tacooooooos."

He laughed and dropped his head back. "I told you we don't have time. I have to get back."

She frowned at him as she dug money from the pockets of her cargo capris. "Seems like you thought we had plenty of time for kissing, why not tacos?"

She paid the guy in the truck and he handed her two tacos. Freddie didn't assume that one was his, knew that both were hers. She returned to him, smirking. "And I'd rather have the tacos. They taste better than a nub."

"Okay, walk and eat," he said, continuing on the way. She laughed drily as she hurried to fall into step with him even as she sank her teeth into the corn shell of a taco.

"Can't you wait one minute, geeze!"

Freddie sighed and waited. She made him hold her extra taco and ate quickly, not in an attempt to do as he wanted, Sam just always ate quickly. When she was finished with the first, she wadded up the paper and threw it at his face. He attempted to bat it away but it hit him below the eye. Sam laughed. He didn't.

"What's your problem?"

"Nothing. Eat."

Her face hardened. "You don't have to walk me home."

"I'm going to, though."

"Why?"

"Because I want to."

"You're not acting like it."

"I just don't know why you can't eat and walk at the same time." He said back, unable to keep the harshness out of his tone. "I know you can do it—it was your talent at the beauty contest last summer!" Actually, it'd been more dancing, but the comment made his point while insulting her intelligence and eating habits and he knew that it impressed Sam. Not that she would ever show it.

"What is the big deal, huh?" she asked. "Must you please your mother every second of the day?"

"I don't try to please her every second of the day!" Freddie defended.

"Ya do to, ya mama's boy."

"Do not!" he hated when she called him that. "It's just a school night and she freaks out about me getting a full night's rest before school and I hate for her to stress out over me because she has to work so hard!

Sam rolled her eyes. "All parents work hard, but that's no reason to obey their every command. My mom works hard, but'cha ya don't see me bending over backyards to follow her stupid rules."

"You're mom has no rules!" Freddie shot back, then added in his anger, "and what she does is hardly hard _work_, Sam!"

He knew it the minute he said it that it crossed a line. Sam threw her taco into his face and shoved him. "Screw you!"

He was sorry about what he said, but the Mexican meat sauce in his eye wouldn't let him apologize. It was all over his shirt, too, and that stuff was hard to get out. The shove that came directly after the stains only pissed him off.

Though he was angry, some stubborn part of him wouldn't let him just turn around, leave her there, and go back up to his apartment. For some stupid reason, his anger only strengthened his resolve to get her home and then to get himself back home before his mother showed up.

"Whatever," he growled, charging past her. "Let's go before you waste even more time."

She laughed loudly, throwing her arms up to the night sky. "Oh my god, you're still worried about your stupid curfew!"

"Just come on, Sam." He barked over his shoulder. He was walking hard and fast in the direction of her apartment building. She hurried to catch up, but not to let him take her home, just to catch his arm and twist it. She wasn't easily forgetting his comment about her mom and he never expected her to.

He screamed when she wrenched his arm around. "Ah! Sam, be careful! The glenohumeral joint is the easiest joint in the body to dislocate—OW!"

"I don't need to be escorted home by a nub," she hissed, and he knew how angry she must be to be beyond teasing his knowledge of anatomy and his dream of being a doctor. She threw him to the ground. He skinned his elbow and sat up. The humiliation of being so easily beaten by a girl filled the skin of his face and neck with fire, made him clench his jaw and stand.

"Well, too bad. Because I am."

"Don't bother yourself," she said, turning and walking away. "Leave me alone. I don't want you anywhere near me."

He caught her by the arm—in hindsight it was a stupid thing to do after her clear warning for him to stay away—but he was beyond the calm lake of self-preservation, deep into the jungle of I-Want-My-Dignity-Back. Though his survival instincts had been momentarily shut down in his anger, his hand closing tightly on her upper arm and pulling her around to face him rather roughly, put Sam's instincts in full throttle. Within two seconds, she had him slammed against a payphone box with both his arms twisted around behind him. The glass cracked under the force of it. Man, she was strong.

His anger broke then as he realized how roughly he'd handled her, and he cried, "I'm sorry! Sam, I didn't mean to scare you!"

"You didn't scare me," she hissed, but he thought her grip on his arms behind his back said otherwise.

He laughed, decided to go with it. "Right, because I'm just a nub? I'd never hurt you, Sam, seriously. I couldn't even if I wanted to, right?"

She let him go. He turned to face her, rotating his shoulders. His jaw hurt from hitting the glass. He rubbed it. "Sam, I'm so sorry, really."

She waved a hand, wasn't looking at him. He had a feeling it would be a while before he saw vulnerable and shy Sam again. He was looking forward to the punishment. He deserved it for putting her in her mother's house, even if it was just for a second.

She was smiling, weakly, but it was there. He imagined she was laughing at herself for letting someone like him scare her like that. She pressed on her eyes, drew in a deep breath and pushed it out harshly. He opened his mouth to comment on her strength—seriously, the glass had actually cracked—but in the moment he did, Sam suddenly gained a hardened expression. Her jaw was set, her mouth became a grim line, her blue eyes went hard. She brought her knee to her chest and slammed her foot into the already cracked glass. It shattered.

"Sam!" he cried, he started to demand explanation, but a yelp filled the night air. For an instant, he actually thought he'd made the noise but then the cop was out of his car and descending on them. "Hey!"

"What?" Freddie's voice cracked, as he literally stepped behind Sam as the beefy cop charged at them with his hand on his nightstick.

Sam looked at the broken glass to the cop, then grabbed Freddie's hand. "RUN!"

Freddie obeyed her command—in hindsight, another stupid thing to do. But he still wasn't back to that calm and logical lake of self-preservation yet. Sam's display of strength had put in him a She's-The-Boss-Jump-At-Her-Command kind of marshy place. It was all hazy and dark, made everything blurry. So he ran. He didn't worry why. He didn't worry how stupid a thing it was to do. He just ran into the night with her hand in his.

Freddie rarely ran full-out like this. He liked the wind in his hair, her fingers between his. He might have been thinking it was kind of fun, exhilarating, but two blocks down, he tripped. He landed hard on his knee. Sam stopped for him. When the cop caught them, she was kneeling beside him, panting, "are you okay?"

"Yeah," he said, rubbing his kneecap. Then the cop was reading them their rights. They were being arrested for destruction of public property and resisting arrest.

Then, and only then, did Freddie's mind finally reach that place where it made sense to obey cops and pretend he didn't know Sam. He swore so fruitfully that the cop told him to watch his mouth. Sam was cringing for him. He wondered if she had realized she was getting him into this or not. He couldn't blame her if she hadn't, not when even he hadn't realized it.

"Why'd you kick the glass?" he asked her as they rode, cuffed in the back of the car. She was looking out her window, ignoring him. She didn't turn around as she answered lowly, "Just got mad at my mom for a second."

Freddie processed that, hated himself for reminding her of her least favorite parts of her home life. It was uncomfortable sitting in a car seat with his wrists cuffed together behind his back. His stomach was in knots. Before he could stop himself, he asked,

"_Why_ did you run?"

"I don't need any more strikes on my record." Sam said with a shrug. In the same way she was suddenly worried about her GPA and diploma, she was worried about her record. Freddie figured that the prospect of leaving high school for the real world was putting her nearer and nearer to walking the line. She continued in a tone loud enough for the driver to hear, "And he's a human _fat-cake_ and usually I can outrun those." With a scoff, her voice softened so that only Freddie could hear. She didn't meet his eye, "I don't know why I told you to run with me—just wanted you with me, I guess. I don't know. I wasn't thinking."

Freddie swore again.

…

Twenty minutes and an awkward phone call to his mother later, Freddie stood gripping the cold iron bars, heart pounding. His mouth was dry. He was so dead. Sam made herself comfortable on a bench that had _Sam Was Here_ carved on it, but she wasn't as flippant as she was pretending to be. He saw the way she kept almost saying something and then not. It was as much of an apology as he was ever going to get from her.

He rubbed his face, satisfied that she was at least trying to say she was sorry. Considering that this whole thing was equally his fault, her half-apology was enough. He went to the bench, sat next to her.

"I can't believe this is the second time I've been locked up today," he said, to try to break the tension. If he didn't then he would start blaming her, and he didn't want to do that. They traded smiles and then both looked at the thumbnail she was digging into the S of her name, deepening it.

"So did you learn anything from her?" Sam asked. Freddie's thoughts had already taken this turn, so he didn't need to ask what Sam was talking about.

He shook his head.

"Well what did you ask her?"

"Nothing," he said.

"Nothing?"

"Yeah, we didn't even talk."

Sam snorted. "Then why'd she lock you up?" her eyebrows went up. "She know about us?"

He liked that she called it us. Unable to beat a smile, he shook his head, started idly scratching his name into the bench next to hers. "I mean I don't think so. She has these kind of panic attacks sometimes and suddenly nothing is clean enough. That's probably all this was."

Sam was shaking her head with real pity. After she deepened the M, and Freddie successfully scratched an & linking their names, she took a big breath and returned to her former question, "So why didn't you spring it on her? She was in a vulnerable spot, she might have cracked."

Freddie snorted, dusted their work of art.

"No, I'm serious," Sam said. Freddie looked at her and shrugged. "Okay, I might next time."

"Might?"

"Well I'm not hoping she flips out again. Chemical baths aren't fun."

Sam smirked, and Freddie saw she had a quip on the tip of her tongue, but to his surprise, she let the opportunity pass. Before he could kiss her to positively reinforce this good behavior, his mother's screech pierced their ears.

He swore again.

She bailed him out. He asked her to get Sam out as well and that he'd pay her back, but she didn't seem to hear him. He asked again and realized she was pretending she was deaf to all mentions of Sam. He literally took her chin in his fingers, met her eye, "Mom, please get Sam out, too. It wasn't her fault. I'll pay you back."

Marissa's eyes darted around, not meeting his. "No," she said, in a small high voice. "She can stay there. It'll be better if she stays locked up—she wouldn't be dragging my boy through the city at night and getting him into trouble!"

They fought about it the whole way home. Marissa maintained that Sam was not her problem for a little bit, but then she fell into pretending she couldn't hear again. She was tense and Freddie remembered what Sam'd said about springing the topic on her when she was in a vulnerable state.

"It was a stupid thing to do, Mom, I'm sorry." He said as sincerely as he could. She nodded, shrilled that he was right, it _was_ stupid.

"I'm going to be the good boy you taught me to be more than ever from now on."

"Of course you are!"

"Good boys don't get arrested," he said, "They don't stay out past curfew. They always get a full night's rest. They eat right, and do all their homework, and that's what I'm going to do from now on."

"Good."

"I've got this project to focus on, and I'm going to get an A, Mom. I'll work on it that hard to make up for this."

Marissa was relaxing, sounded less shrill and more enthusiastic as she nodded said, "That's very good, Freddie."

"So," he said casually, not changing his tone of voice in the slightest, "You have to tell me about my dad so I can do the assignment properly,"

"Yes, I—" She realized what she had nearly agreed to, gave him a horrified look, then clammed up in a way he never saw in her before, wouldn't even look at him. For the first time in his life, she was acting like he wasn't even there. She went straight to her room the moment she was back in the apartment. Freddie sighed and flopped down onto the couch.

Whatever.


	6. Chapter 6: iGet What I Ask For

**Chapter 6: iGet What I Asked For**

It was midnight and Freddie was still up. It was worrying him that his mother wasn't out of her room, fretting over his immune system crashing due to lack of the standard eight hours of sleep. He kept glancing worriedly at her door. He could see her shadow moving through the light coming under it and once he thought he heard her on the phone with someone, probably her shrink. Good, Dr. Nolton had a strict Give Your Son His Space policy.

He was already planning on how he would explain all of this to Dr. Nolton on his next visit. (There was absolutely no reason why he had to go to the shrink, except that his mother made him.) He had started wondering if the head-doctor knew anything about love when noise in the hall outside the apartment door drew his attention. Through the peephole, he saw Spencer's tall frame warped as he unlocked his door. Carly and Sam were in tow behind him.

Freddie opened his door. Carly and Sam whirled around.

"Still peeping through the peep hole, I see," Sam smirked.

"Yeah, but now he's waiting for _you_," Carly giggled playfully with another knowing look to the both of them. With a wave and a warning to Sam to be upstairs and in bed by one because it was a school night, she jumped her eyebrows and disappeared into her apartment, shutting the door behind her but not locking it.

Sam lingered in the hall, trying to tame what would be a shy smile.

"Sorry I couldn't get Mom to bail you out," he said.

She waved a hand. "Don't worry about it."

He ran a hand down his face, "I actually got arrested!"

"You feel like a badass, don't you?" she asked with a laugh, crossing her arms. He couldn't stop from bouncing on his toes, grinning as he nodded. She stepped closer, looking up and down the hall as if to make sure they were alone.

"You _were_ pretty hot in those handcuffs."

He wagged his eyebrows and she laughed, "_Nub_," and put her hands in her back pockets, rocking back onto her heels. "Did you ask about your dad?"

"Yeah," he said flatly, "It didn't go well."

She looked disappointed. "Too bad,"

"Staying at Carly's tonight?" he asked. She nodded. A moment passed somewhat awkwardly. Freddie checked his phone for lack of anything better to do.

"What time do you have?" Sam asked. She wasn't wearing her timepiece necklace. He had to look again because he hadn't really seen the screen the first time.

"Uh, quarter after midnight." He answered and Sam perked up. "_Celebrities Underwater_ is on." And she went right passed him, letting herself into his apartment.

"My mom's home!" he said dumbly.

"Are you grounded?" Sam asked. He frowned. Actually, no. He wasn't. Marissa had clammed up before she could get to that part. Sam jumped her eyebrows at him and sat on the couch, turned the channel to the show, where Michael Cera was turning blue in the face as he attempted to hold his breath longer than Kierra Knightly. Freddie sat beside her, tossing a look at his mother's bedroom door.

Sam snorted, "I've watched TV over here before. She won't mind."

Freddie breathed out, "Right,"

Sam jabbed an elbow into his ribs, "Thought you were going to get lucky, didn't you?"

"No!" he said too quickly. She snorted, kicked off her shoes and reclined on the couch. She put her feet in his lap with an order for him to massage them. He tried to refuse, but she gave him a warning look, and he wanted to touch her anyway, even if it was her feet. He began massaging, feeling all the little metatarsal bones of her foot under his fingers as he pushed his thumbs into the soles of her feet. She sighed.

Her hair was splayed out on the couch cushion, her face turned to look at the screen, illuminated by flickering silver. At this angle, he could see the perfect mounds that her breasts made through her shirt. He watched her chest rise and fall with her breaths until she kicked him, told him to stop staring like a freak. He focused on her feet, then, and tried to not think about how much he wanted to just crawl over her and make her sigh in other ways.

Her socks were both white, but the brands weren't the same. One said No Boundaries, the other Just Do It. Freddie laughed outright, wondered if it'd be wise to take advice from mismatched socks. When Sam asked what was so funny, he decided to tell the truth. She laughed, called him a nub, and sat up. She tossed a look over the couch to his mother's room. He looked, too. The light had gone from the crack under the door. His heart began to hammer. Marissa was asleep.

Sam looked at her phone, "Carly expects me in half an hour."

Freddie said nothing. He thought he knew where this was going, didn't want to jinx it. She raised her eyes to meet his, a smoldering smile on her lips, "Let's see, in Freddie-Stanima-Time that's time for… thirty times!"

"Haha," he croaked and twisted her little toe. She barely muffled her scream. Freddie hadn't been thinking—was suddenly sure his mother was awake as he covered Sam's mouth. In doing so, they fell backwards onto the cushions and he was over her after all. They were both laughing as lowly as they could. She hit him, hissed, "Idiot!"

He hushed her and they lay there perfectly still and silent. A clock ticked dramatically on the screen as the celebrities battled lung capacity. When Freddie was certain they hadn't disrupted his mother, he looked back at Sam. She was looking up at him, eyes shining.

"So how about it?" he asked as her fingers went into his hair.

"What?" she asked. He laughed said, "You don't have a lot of time before Carly will come looking for you…" She bit her lip and wriggled a little under him. He nipped at her lips, "Do'ya want to test my mom's hearing a little more?"

Sam laughed in surprise and Freddie stood, offered her a hand to help her up, then led her to his room. He left the TV playing—the more noise to cover theirs the better. His heart was pounding. He felt like he was breaking rules though there were none that explicitly said he could not have sex while a parent slept in the next room.

The fact that it was past midnight on a school night and he was undressing a girl actually made him giggle. She rolled her eyes, scoffed, "God, you are a dork,"

"Shut up," he said, "You'll ruin it."

"Ruin what?" she mocked, echoing him perfectly from their first time. He grinned, wrapped his arms around her bare torso and fell into bed, "The best night of your life," he said.

"Nub," she giggled and kissed him.

…

The next morning, Freddie got up earlier than usual to wash his sheets, no need for Marissa to see him doing it. She'd ask questions, it'd get weird. He got ready for school and made breakfast, even got the sheets into the dryer before Marissa even came out of her room. She'd slept in. Coming directly after her strange behavior of the night before, Freddie was even more worried. He gave her a hug, asked how she was.

"Fine, Freddie," she answered as if surprised he would even ask, like nothing was wrong. She went about making herself some breakfast, he sat at the table and went back to eating his second bowl of cereal.

He had just noted that Marissa was looking at the clock every five minutes when there was a pounding at the door. Freddie answered. The man had a frame that filled up the doorway. His black hair was cropped short, his goatee neatly trimmed, his muscles making his shirt work hard. He had a duffle bag over one shoulder.

"Gunsmoke!" Marissa cried, "You're here!"

Freddie frowned as the man who fought in three wars since he'd known him and who once followed him around for a week when he was a witness to a Smoothie crime stepped into the apartment and dropped his bag beneath the coat rack. What in the world was he doing here?

"_Hola, Senora Benson, Senor Benson_," he said gruffly, stoically. He might as well have stepped into a room hosting a wake.

But Gunsmoke was always like that.

Freddie had known the half-Spanish man for as far back as he could remember, going back as far as _El Calle de Sesame_. The guerrilla war-fare expert had been hired by Marissa to make sure her son wasn't kidnapped by drug lords or child trafficking people while she worked, making him a kind of bodyguard for the white toddler in Venezuela.

Literally, the mean mercenary had been his baby-sitter.

They grasped each other's forearms with both hands in greeting.

"What're you doing here?" Freddie asked, unable to keep his smile or excitement out of his voice despite the fact that he'd realized why the man was there.

"In the vicinity, thought I'd stop in to check on you," Gunsmoke said in English with a ruff, stoic voice, but one side of his mouth was quirked upwards in as much of a smile as Freddie could ever recall on the man.

Freddie rolled his eyes. "Whatever, I know mom called you to keep Sam away from me."

Gunsmoke didn't answer because he wasn't listening, not to Freddie. The man's dark blue eyes followed Marissa as she flittered about, giving instructions. Freddie knew from experience that he was taking them down word for word to be followed to the letter, like he was on another job or something. Freddie just smirked and shook his head. The dude seriously never relaxed, like ever. Freddie had a suspicion that he got tenser the further away from the jungle he got.

"Your bag goes in the hall closet there," Marissa was saying. "There are towels on the rack in the bathroom and new soap. I know you've been traveling all night so Freddie will set up the cot in his room for you so that you can take a nap…Freddie? Freddie!"

Freddie's phone had vibrated with a text message. At his mother's shout he jumped, and blushed. Gunsmoke was eyeing the phone with interest like it was a probable threat.

"Oh right," Freddie cleared his throat, stashed the incriminating text he'd just gotten from Sam back into his pocket, "no problem."

As he worked on getting the old cot from his closet, he half-wondered why Gunsmoke had agreed to be here over something as ridiculous as keeping Freddie out of trouble and half-thought of Sam, because he was always thinking of her. It could only be a flare of Mom-Crazy this ridiculous for that girl to not be _constantly _consuming his entire brain.

Something fishy was going on here. Marissa had called Gunsmoke last night, clearly, but surely it wasn't _just_ to keep him away from Sam. She couldn't be THAT crazy… could she?

But he'd had sex with a girl, then got arrested with her, then had sex with her again (and honestly, he had suspicions last night that Sam had been overly dramatic just trying to get them caught on purpose out of spite or something.) They'd thought they'd gotten away with it anyway, but now a Rogue GI Jo had permission to shout whenever he was hungry so Marissa could put something in the oven. So maybe she _had_ heard them. Maybe Gunsmoke truly _was_ only there to keep Sam away.

Honestly, Freddie wouldn't put it past this mother.

…

Marissa surprised Freddie by telling him he didn't have to go to school today, because she wasn't going to work. They were going to catch up with their old friend. Freddie texted Sam the news, told her he'd miss her. She texted back that he was being a girl but that, yeah, she'd miss him, too. Then directly after that she texted, only _because I got no one else to copy from during the science test_. He texted back a comment on her sweetness, which she texted back a colon and a P.

Gunsmoke would be taking a cot in the corner of his room. He always did. Freddie was grinning, thinking of Sam, wondering what kind of advice Gunsmoke might have about girls as he unfolded the camp bed to set it up. He heard heavy combat boots stroll down the hallway, but then they stopped. Then there was the low sounds of his mother's whispered Spanish. Gunsmoke replied in kind. They were in the hall, out of sight.

_Que_? Freddie straightened, stopped pushing on the cot so that the springs would be quiet, cocked his head to one side and tried to distinguish words. Now Gunsmoke was speaking in a commanding but reassuring tone—like, it totally _wasn't_ his usual monotone.

This wasn't the first time Freddie had caught the pair whispering together—but this time was different. Maybe because there wasn't an evident reason for Gunsmoke to be there, maybe because this time Freddie had no idea exactly what they were saying, or maybe because now he had his own experience with soft whispers—but something occurred to Freddie about seventeen years too late.

Holy _chiz._

Freddie didn't have time to move an inch closer before Gunsmoke reappeared like a ninja in the door frame, eyes locked on Freddie.

With a start that was actually kind of painful, Freddie closed his eyes and swallowed, then laughed. "You scared me."

The corner of Gunsmoke's mouth moved again. "That's hilarious."

Freddie saw now that somewhere in the course of his super-secret Spanish conversation with Marissa in the hallway, he'd removed his boots and the belt with all his survival gear clipped into place. It hung like a coiled snake in his fingers. The belt was never out of Gunsmoke's reach. Ever.

"Um, bed's about ready, just—hold on. Let me—" Freddie put his back into it and with a high-pitched, cracking whine, the hinges unfolded themselves and the bed fell into shape. Clean sheets and a thin blanket were already in place. Freddie just had to tug at some corners and then toss some pillows at one end. He turned to smile at his guest and shrugged in an It's-Not-The-Ritz kind of way.

Gunsmoke, though, looked more than happy to meet those pillows. "_Gracias_," he said, settling gingerly on the edge, which sank with a pop under him. The belt got a pillow to itself. He took a moment to rub a disk in his back and then lay down, propped his thick socks up and wriggled his toes happily.

Freddie was smiling. "What'd'ya do to your back?"

"Got old," Gunsmoke said with his eyes closed.

Freddie frowned, disappointed. He'd hoped to hear about another war, or possibly tracking American hostages through the jungle for six weeks and carrying the wounded home after hand-to-hand combat, something like that.

"So what are you doing here?"

"Told you."

"Just to check on me?"

"If you want to ask me something, just ask it."

"Are you my father?"

"No."

Freddie deflated. It would have been too good to be true. Still, even though it didn't mean what he'd hoped, there was no denying the affection he'd heard in the gruff soldier's whispers earlier.

"What were you and Mom talking about?" Freddie asked.

Gunsmoke's eye snapped open. "When?"

"Just now, in the hallway," Freddie said with a devious smile. He crossed his arms. "I heard you guys whispering."

Gunsmoke's barrel of a chest paused mid-swell and he rolled his head on the pillow to look up at Freddie, eyes narrowed with intrigue. The corner of his mouth quirked. "Think you know a thing or two don't you?"

Freddie shrugged, failing to pull off the humility he aimed for. "Maybe."

The room fell quiet. Gunsmoke looked away and his chest swelled twice its normal size. "Listen, me and Mary—"

"Hey, don't worry about it." Freddie said. "I'm not a kid anymore. I get it. I think you're good for her."

Gunsmoke laughed, a short sound, but so rare that it meant he was really tickled. "I don't know about that."

Freddie lowered himself onto the edge of his bed—still bare of sheets because the dryer was still going. "But you _aren't_ my dad? Like, _absolutely_ sure?"

"Yes. You were already in the oven before I met her."

Freddie scratched the back of his head. "It's only because, well, you've always sort of been here, so…I mean, I don't know why it never occurred to me to ask before now, but…" he drew a deep breath and decided to go for it, "Did you ever meet my dad? Could you, maybe, tell me something about him?"

Gunsmoke's hesitation was the affirmative Freddie hadn't dared to hope for. He swallowed, and opened his mouth to ask for a name, but there were so many questions waiting that the wrong one fell out.

"Why did he leave?"

Gunsmoke looked at him with mild confusion. Freddie licked his lips and half-shrugged. "I mean, I guess I know why…" he looked around the room meant to be his private space but that she kept meticulously clean and organized. There was an air purifier in the corner and labels inside his drawers for what underwear is supposed to be piled where. Gunsmoke shook his head.

"I know she's a little high maintenance—" Freddie snorted, Gunsmoke held up his hands, "and I can imagine how smothering it must be to a boy your age, but that's not what happened."

"No?"

"_She_ left _him_."

"What?" That was so wildly opposite of anything Freddie had ever imagined. "Why?"

Gunsmoke's dark eyes leveled on Freddie's. "She got smart."

Chills rolled down Freddie's arms. He'd never considered the possibility that his mother had been the victim in her marriage. It was devastating news. Freddie wished he had never asked.

Gunsmoke hit his knee with his knuckles. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah," he said, acting casual. He'd deal with this on his own time. He dropped down into his desk chair, swung around to face him. "Thanks for telling me." He faced his computer screen, moved his mouse so that the screen saver (a slideshow of iCarly screen caps) would go away. None of his friends were on-line for chat because they were all at school. He wished he was there, still oblivious to the recent clue about his father and happy and holding hands with Sam. His shoulders sagged and he pressed on his eyes.

She'd had to _run away_ from him.

He stood. He needed to talk about this, with friends, with Sam. He was nearly to the front door, with an excuse to his mother on the tip of his tongue about a science test and not being able to miss it, when,

"Marissa! We need to talk to the boy!" Gunsmoke called across the apartment in Spanish as he emerged from the hallway. Freddie whirled to see the man give his mother a firm, but reassuring look. She was on the couch, watching the news. She was holding the remote and it was actually shaking in her grip. She turned down the TV.

"He needs to hear it, Marissa," Gunsmoke said in English.

Pale, she stood, faced Freddie. She wasn't blinking, her mouth was a straight line. He hated when she got like that. He found himself waving his hands, trying to play it casual. "No I don't need to hear anything. Never mind, Mom. Sorry I asked—" he had the door opened, was nearly free.

"_Don't move_," Gunsmoke ordered him. He obeyed. It just didn't make sense to his self-preservation instincts to disobey an order like that from Gunsmoke. He turned, sighing wearily, to face them again. The door shut behind him.

Marissa went shakily to the kitchen table and sat. Gunsmoke joined her, kicked out a chair for Freddie, which he took without being told. Several long moments of silence passed in which Gunsmoke eyed Marissa with a steady analytical gaze. She looked at the tabletop, twisted her fingers nervously.

Freddie's stomach rolled the whole time. How could he have not seen it before? How could he have not realized that this was why she never talked about him, why she had ignored his questions. _She left him_. _She got smart. _

It was clear it was bad. Really bad; he didn't want to know anymore.

He was about to stand, his stomach so knotted that he was prepared to walk right out the door no matter how many commands Gunsmoke shot his way. But then, in a low, wavering voice, she began.

"When I was eighteen…" she swallowed, she wouldn't look at him, or Gunsmoke, looked at her hands, instead. "I had no choice but to leave my husband of two years. I couldn't—Um, I couldn't," she bit her lip to stop the trembling and continued, "I couldn't take my things with me, nothing I loved, not even an extra change of clothes. I was too afraid he'd see them gone, and he'd know, and he'd come find me…

…

**Just know that we are severely disappointed that there is NOT an option to list Gunsmoke as a main character in the drop down lists for iCarly fanfiction information. WTF? He's badass. (As you will see in the next chapter)**

**Oh, and if you speak fluent Spanish, please be forgiving of any errors from here on out. Foreign tongues = Not A Strength Of TwoWriteHands (seriously its amazing we survived two semesters of it)! If there are mistakes, let us know how to fix 'em.**


	7. Chapter 7: iReveal The Past

**Chapter 7: iReveal the Past (in Astonishing Detail and Deliberate Ambiguity at the Same Time)**

_WARNING: sensitive issues implied_

…She left dinner cooking on the stove, wet clothes in the washing machine, and no sign of where she was going. She didn't care where she ended up, she just had to get out of that house, that town—as far away as possible.

There was a name no one said, a number she could call. This guy would get her out. He got others out. It was safe. No money, no problem, he would do it for free this time, given her unique situation. He was meeting her in the next town, the corner diner. It was a busy place, part of a franchise, done up like a fifties soda-shop. A lot of people filled the booths, kept the waitresses running around. She knew him by the book he was reading; his message had said to look for it.

She approached the small table wedged between the old-fashioned jukebox and the bathrooms. A lone man sat there reading. He was probably in his midtwenties, a soldier. She could tell by his hair cut, his tucked in shirt, his muscles and his tan (toned by real work in the sun, not a Bo-flex and sitting by the pool.)

There was a time she would have been terrified to do this—to break the rules, to trust a complete stranger—but life was funny like that. Nothing scared her anymore, except what would happen if she stayed. In that house, it was _his_ way and no one left. His family made sure of that, had stopped her twice already, said God didn't believe in divorce. Well, she didn't believe in raising a child with that man.

Waitresses skirted around her, oblivious to her predicament. Cheery customers flirted and ordered the big stack of pancakes. A pair of kids hers age argued nearby about what song to play next.

She licked her lips, and read the book's title with a dry throat, "Gunsmoke?"

The man looked up, and dark eyes widened on a face that otherwise didn't move. "They didn't say you were pregnant."

Marissa caressed her large stomach. "Y-Yes, is that a problem?"

His eyes travelled slowly from the baby-bump to the bruises on her face. His Adam's-apple pulsed and he shook his head ever so slightly. "Just alters the plan slightly, but don't worry. I got tickets and my men are waiting to meet us. Let's go."

He stood, tucked the book under an arm, and with fingers at her elbow, led her out of the backdoor of the diner, through a kitchen where a cook yelled something about hairnets and health inspectors, which Gunsmoke ignored. Her heart was pounding—this was happening. She had hardly dared to hope it would. She remembered to send thanks to the girl in the convenient store who had sensed in Marissa her need for that phone number.

A car waited in the alley. Just a normal looking car; a rental, blue, with pine scent hanging on the mirror. He opened the back door and had her lay flat in the backseat, and she watched the sky move above her as he drove slowly, walked her through the plan.

There would be a bus, then a train station—was going to dress her as a boy, but since the bun was so nearly done—they'd make do with a hat. His men met them at a gas station—_the_ gas station. The girl behind the counter looked relieved to see Marissa again, gave a small encouraging smile as her soft brown eyes lingered on the bruises.

Marissa didn't like this. Her husband used this gas station when he went out of town. His friends were probably watching it. They were going to get caught. Gunsmoke shook his head again, but he made only one promise. She wasn't going back.

They took a different car to the bus station. This one was white, borrowed. There was mail in the visor and a child's smudgy handprint on the window. Marissa starred at that little hand as she lay in the backseat once again. In the front passenger's seat, Gunsmoke's colleague wanted to know why no one bothered to tell him this one was pregnant.

She rubbed her stomach and thought about the life inside it. The life she was giving to the world, and the world she was going to give to this little life. A free world, a safe one away from her husband. She felt stronger. She felt like she could do this, whatever it took. It was all for the baby.

After a horrible bus ride cramped and stuffy with tourists looking wide-eyed at her bruises and the dangerous men escorting her, a train took them across three states. No delays, no hang ups, no trouble. It was too easy. She didn't believe it when he said she was free. It couldn't be true. She'd wanted it too badly - her husband knew too many people.

Gunsmoke only shook his head; he knew more.

She was free. She was never going back.

"You're sister is waiting to meet us when we stop. Does she know about the, uh…baby situation?"

She didn't answer, had her own question, "What was her name?"

"Who?"

"The girl at the gas station. I didn't get her name."

"Rachel."

She smiled, a small thing, but an honest smile nonetheless. It wasn't the first time one of them ever smiled at him, but it was a rare commodity on these ventures. It put her in the smaller group—among the stronger ones. He'd worked in this dark corner of the world long enough to know that it broke people. It broke her, but she was holding herself together. His Adam's apple pulsed again.

"Will you tell Rachel I said thank you?" her voice trembled with sincerity, and her fingers were sprawled over the dome of her stomach. "Thank you _so much_, for helping me?"

He nodded curtly. "Will do."

"She was an angel, you all are... Does she work for you?"

"She's our eyes on the inside," was his military response.

"Aren't you afraid they'll know she helped us?"

"You don't have to worry about Rachel. She's a trained professional."

Marissa nodded. She still couldn't believe professionals were involved in the first place—to the world that town looked so innocent. It eased her to know she was not alone in knowing the truth. She licked her lips.

"How long have you been, uh, watching The Children?" her voice cracked before she said the name of her old life, her prison, the cult her husband led.

"Nearly ten years now," he answered. She was surprised. He didn't look that old. As he spoke, his face was softer than she'd ever seen it, still it didn't move, just remained that stoic mask of a soldier, but in his eyes she saw something else. "We've helped a lot of people, a lot of them like you."

Marissa didn't believe he was as detached as he pretended. "How many?"

"Pardon?"

"How many exactly? What's the number?" she knew he knew it.

One side of his mouth twitched, quirked upwards in a half smile. Marissa's young purple and yellowish-green face split into a wide, bright smile at the sight of it. The pair actually chuckled—and that _was_ a first, laughing while still in route out.

"Nineteen," he said. "Well—twenty," he nodded at the bump. She smiled in appreciation, but then her eyes moved to the world sliding by outside and the smile faded. She took a deep breath. "The other eighteen…how many of them had families willing to take them back?"

He looked down. She didn't need him to answer. She took a deep breath. "My little sister Jenny's left her dream to help me—well, they all would, really, if I went back but…I married—_him_—to get away from that life. The circus," she laughed, tears in her eyes, and shook her head, "I used to think that was a prison…"

The train rumbled on, and he sat looking at her from behind that mask. If he was surprised to learn the young woman came from a circus, he didn't show it. She dried her eyes, embarrassed. "I'm sorry."

For the first time since the train had started moving, she worried about where it was taking her. She'd tried to change her life before without a plan, and look where that had gotten her. She knew better now. She wasn't going to get off this train without a life to step into. Otherwise she would just end up taking shelter in another prison again.

"I…I guess I need a job. I need to get a place to stay for…" they both looked at the bump. She'd felt so blessed to learn she was with child, but had been too focused on getting out of that life to consider being a single mother without the material comfort her husband's house had offered.

"Are you good with blood?" he asked suddenly.

"Excuse me?"

"Does blood make you faint?"

She thought about it, slowly shook her head, unsure where he was going with this.

"I know of some work," he said. "It won't be easy, and with the kid…" he shook his head, unconvinced.

"What's the job?" at this point she would do anything decent.

"Nursing, for Red Cross."

"I'll do it," she said immediately. A nurse. Taking care of people. She was good at that.

"It's stationed out of Venezuela," he said as if that was a deal breaker.

She swallowed and nodded; hadn't expected that—but that wasn't a problem. In fact, it was a God-send. Maybe with a couple of national boarders between her and that old life, she would feel safer when these good men were gone.

"Venezuela," she said pensively. "I've always loved the Spanish language."

"_Habla espanol_?" he asked with real interest. His eyebrows even rose. Her lips pressed together in another smile. She shook her head. "But I'm willing to learn if someone would teach me."

"Consider the rest of this journey your first lesson." He pressed a hand into his strong chest. "_Me llamo_ Gunsmoke. _Tu llamas_…?" he flipped the hand forward to indicate her.

"Marissa," she said.

"_Bueno_," he said with another half-smile, impressed.

She was a fast learner, and Gunsmoke was a patient instructor. By the time the train pulled itself into its final station a week later, she had a firm grasp of the basics. A girl no younger than Marissa hugged her before she was completely off the train. The sisters whispered and cried and held each other until they were laughing and squealing, playing catch up.

They didn't talk about The Children, not even the child she was carrying. It was as if Marissa was only returning from a boring boarding school. They talked of their family, and Gunsmoke heard a bunch of names that could only come from a circus, how they would have all been there but the show must go on, and she understood.

"Thank you Jen," Marissa said, "for being here for me."

"Hey," she said, "you would do the same for me, right?"

Marissa nodded and the sisters hugged again. Jenny asked with her chin still on her big sister's shoulder, "So this baby, if it's a boy…"

"Yeah."

Jenny deliberately shrugged it off and put on a smile similar to the flashy one Marissa had given that had raised a real laugh out of Gunsmoke on the train. It came naturally, but on the innocent face of the unblemished sister, it was more clearly a performance smile. "He'll be wonderful. I'll bet he looks like Dad and Papa."

Marissa didn't want to talk about who the baby might resemble. She changed the subject, introduced Gunsmoke to her sister. They had spoken on the phone, but never face to face. It was a pleasure, she hugged him and thanked him, and Gunsmoke said it was just his job, but the look in his eye when he said it told Marissa something else.

She and Jenny began their training as nurses, and he found them an apartment nearby, negotiated the rent and price for furniture. Jenny was a little taken by the exotic soldier after that. Marissa and Gunsmoke had a good time rolling their eyes at her exuberant way of flirting, which amounted to the hard work of a fly trying to fly through a closed window.

"Do you usually help the others this much?" Marissa asked, when he found her at the hospital and announced he knew a woman who was looking to get rid of a crib and some baby clothes.

He shrugged, unwilling to lie or give the truth. He didn't have to. Marissa crossed her arms primly, a syringe between her fingers ready to go for the tomato in front of her—she was meant to practice on it. She had experience with needles, though. Her husband had made her administer his fixes often enough.

"What makes me different?"

He took a moment to think about it. "You're in bigger trouble than they were. Never relocated a victim as young as you, or pregnant, and never all the way out of the country before, either—not to mention who's baby that is."

Well, there was no denying that. Her husband had wanted a son more than anything. She imagined the rage he was in, discovering that his youngest wife was missing in action, and just days after he'd announced to the family that she was going to give him the son they longed for. Her heart hurt when she thought of the innocent people that would pay for her disobedience—her knitting circle, her sister wives—

She'd warned them to get out. They hadn't listened, had turned her in every time she tried to leave on her own. It wasn't their fault. They did what they thought they had to do to protect themselves, their babies. Better to turn over the trouble-maker than make more trouble by agreeing with her.

Marissa refocused on the job at hand, stabbed the tomato and injected it with water while an instructor watched.

"They'll be looking for me," she said, capping and throwing the needle into a metal pan on her cart. The observing instructor smiled and checked things on his clipboard, moved on to the next student. "They'll look everywhere for me…" she said, mostly to herself.

Gunsmoke could tell she was nervous at the thought.

"Not here."

"Even here."

"Well, let them try, honey, this is a military base," he said, and it was a rise she'd never gotten out of him before. Jenny had started trying different things to crack that mask—had resorted to those undignified Mama jokes—without success, and here Marissa need only show doubt in his plans and he snapped like a crocodile.

She would have laughed except he'd called her honey with some kind of manish condescension and it pissed her off.

"Hey," she snapped sharply. Marissa wielded a second syringe threateningly at the burly man's face. "Don't _honey_ me, _honey_. I am a _mother_ and a _nurse_ and I have been through too much _chiz_ to take that tone of voice from the likes of you!"

He cringed in the way one does when high-pitched noises screw into eardrums. "Damn it, Mary," he said, a hand at the closest ear. "Keep your wig on, all right? I only meant that you're safe here. How many times do I have to tell you that?"

She didn't answer that question, focused on preparing this second needle for injecting. Once the second tomato was squared away and she'd gotten another smile and check from the instructor, she sniffed, brushed at her nose with a knuckle and then planted her fists on her hips. "What did you say about a cradle?"

"I can bring it by later."

"Dinner's at 7."

He nodded and left the hospital.

Jenny wanted candles on the table. Marissa didn't like fire of any sort. Gunsmoke showed up in combat boots, with a dismantled cradle clacking against the gun and knife on his belt as he hauled it through the door and presented it proudly. It was a good cradle, got the girls talking about the ones they had on the road in the circus campers, which then got all those crazy names tossed around again.

Gunsmoke was almost smiling and didn't realize it. He assembled the cradle in silence as he listened to the stories—then Jenny was in the kitchen doing the dishes and Marissa was running an appraising hand over the polished rail of the baby-bed. She looked hundreds of miles away and sad.

"In a few years, you can go home, to the US, if you want."

"A few years?" she repeated in horror, and he knew that she wasn't upset by the word years, but the word few. She shook her head. "He's never going to give up. You don't understand. This is his _son_! _The_ Son. He'll never stop! The family won't ever stop!"

"That's why we're still here," he said. "In usual extraction, our involvement ends when the victim is taken to a safe house secured by the previous family. We free their body, and turn it over to psychological professionals and doctors to free them in the other ways. You though, you were free up here before you even called us," he tapped his head, then snapped his fingers, "Which reminds me, there's a head doctor on the base, you're to report to him every day."

"What?" she shrieked.

He leveled dark blue eyes on her. "Jenny says you're not sleeping."

Marissa looked away.

"Don't you want someone a little more understanding to talk to about all this?" his eyes jumped briefly to the kitchen and the sound of running water, clanking dishes. He was right. Jenny wanted to help, but she really had no idea.

Marissa swallowed, tried to ignore what her father had always taught her about head-doctors—how they were coots, taking money for doing what a brick wall would do for free. And anyway, this doctor's service _was_ free, like Gunsmoke's.

Between training as a nurse and learning Spanish, and talking to the doctors every day, the short weeks left in her pregnancy flew by. She became a mother on an American base in a small hospital in a hot and sticky climate. A boy; six pounds three ounces, and that was it, he was her whole world. She cared about nothing else but that bundle of joy, not her sister, not herself, not even the man who'd saved her life, who smiled a real smile for the first time when he met number twenty.

...

The next six years unfurled in Venezuela like the exotic blossoms found there. Marissa became the most dependable and skilled nurse on the base, could talk fluently with the locals. Jenny eventually tired of pursuing Gunsmoke, became interested in another soldier with battle scars. The baby grew and started to walk, so Marissa arranged for a locator chip to be surgically embedded in his skull. Not what Gunsmoke would have done had it been his decision, but there was no denying how useful it could be in a crisis.

The baby started talking a little. Marissa entered her twenties, followed closely by her sister, and the boy could say full sentences by the time Gunsmoke left his twenties and embraced that epic old age of thirty. A war started, he was shipped off to a different corner of the world, came back in one piece, went right back to his side-business of saving kidnapping victims across the Americas.

Occasionally, he brought her a jungle blossom and told little Freddie stories about living in the woods. He let him play with his compass, made sure he was well behaved, and then sometimes he just brought Marissa an injured, starved, and tortured hostage freed from jungle warfare as an opportunity to obsess over someone else's health so she could "stop being so—never mind, just let the kid alone for five seconds."

Gunsmoke was first and foremost a solider, but for some reason for Marissa he was a little more, a friend. But where his little twentieth rescue was concerned, Gunsmoke was a human being. He smiled and laughed when he was with the boy. He even volunteered to babysit whenever he could.

Marissa tried to ignore her sister's knowing smile and suggestive looks whenever there was a blossom wilting on the kitchen table, but Jenny liked to make obvious the little things in life that were supposed to stay unmentioned. As far as the young mother and experienced fighter were concerned, however, nothing would happen, should happen, could happen.

Jenny thought there were feelings in his gifts. But Marissa knew that the flower didn't mean that, it was just a little gesture to let her know that she wasn't alone, she had a friend, not just a sister, and a son and a head-doctor.

Then one day, Marissa suddenly wasn't so sure.

She and Jenny both had had a long night-shift in the hospital, had dragged themselves home in the wee hours of the morning and snickered at the scene they found in their living room—a fort of blankets and cushions big enough for one small child and one big one.

Both were asleep inside it. It wasn't the first time their unconventional babysitter destroyed the living room in the sake of imaginary battle glory, or the first time he let Freddie fall asleep in his day clothes without giving him a bath. Marissa had gone to bed with every intention of explaining to her friend, in no uncertain terms, how important it was that her son was bathed and tucked into bed at a reasonable hour every night. The next morning, she forgot to mention it.

It was already hot. Sticky and hot. One thing she missed about North America was the winters—sweaters and mittens and snowflakes. She fought with her humidity-inflamed hair, put it in a bun to keep it off her neck while she worked, and listened to Elmo sing in Spanish with a smile reflected in the mirror. Elmo was Elmo in any language.

Jenny surprised her by sleepwalking into the bathroom to pee.

"_Jen_!" she cried. Jenny jumped awake with a shout of fear. "What?"

"I thought you were already up!"

"Why?"

"Who's with Freddie?"

"Gunsmoke."

"He's still here?" Usually he left at the crack of dawn, never slept more than a few hours at a time, some kind of habit formed while tracking or evading guerilla-soldiers all the time.

Jenny shrugged in an I-thought-you-asked-him-to-stay-for-once kind of way and carried out her business with droopy eyelids. Marissa went down the hall, stopped just before entering the living room.

She'd been expecting the mess she'd crawled over last night. The room was neat and orderly. Yummy-smelling food was on the kitchen table, abandoned, and the coffee table was lost under crayons and coloring books galore.

Freddie was wide awake, completely captured by the colorful program on the TV. He stood between the couch and his drawing station in just his little whitie-tighties. Gunsmoke avoided baby-bibs and ruined shirts by undressing the kid when he fed him.

Gunsmoke was in the fatigues he always wore, but the shirt was untucked, his shoes and socks were gone, his belt of weapons was hanging up out of child's reach on the curtain rod. She'd never seen him so relaxed and at home before. A stranger might have been sitting there, except he could understand Freddie's lispy Spanglish better even than Marissa—hopefully just because it was so early and Marissa was still tired.

She needed to be more awake to understand what it was that her son was asking for as he danced excitedly with a blue crayon, which he stabbed on the page before him with significant syllables. Gunsmoke, however, only straightened like a man with a mission.

"Ah, that's great. I like the knife, buddy. Look, you have to label it now so Mommy will know what it is and that you drew it all by yourself. Can you do that?"

"_Si_! Yeah! _Eth-cweebo_!" the child lisped.

"Let's see it then. Write a T..."

Concentrating so hard his dark little eyebrows scrunched together, Freddie apparently succeeded in the letter because Gunsmoke fed him another one, and another one, until her baby was writing English words across his page, naming the subjects of the picture, which were Freddie and Gunsmoke.

Marissa felt something that made her feel alive again, but she also felt something else, something that was never going to go away. It saddened her deeply, and she hurried back to her room before she was discovered listening in.

**A/N: So, yeah, a long chapter entirely about "old" people… we go back to the present next, so don't worry if you got bored. **

**Hopefully you didn't get bored, though. Maybe we're weird, but we LOVE our Gunsmoke/Marissa, so we like this chapter. **

**What about you?**


	8. Chapter 8: iM Not Running Yet

**Chapter 8: iM Not Running Yet**

_WARNING: sensitive issues implied_

"…when I saw him spelling out words to you like that, teaching you how to read, I knew it was time to go home."

Freddie frowned. He thought his mother's words might be dragging up an old memory, one long forgotten. But maybe he was just imagining it, like the goats. He was recalling feeling proud that he'd written his very first full sentence, _this is me and Gunsmoke _or something like that, written across the bottom of a picture he'd drawn of himself and his only friend, the grown-up man that was always around. He remembered he'd drawn Gunsmoke's knife at his belt, made it purple.

"Freddie?" Marissa asked, her hand on his forearm. He snapped out of it.

He was having trouble processing what they'd just told him. It was easier to think about Spanish Elmo and purple knives. Yeah, he could remember it. _This is me and Gunsmoke_. The words had been spelled out to him, but he'd formed the letters and the spacing all on his own. He'd been so excited to show his mom.

Marissa was still pale, watching him with anxious wide eyes, which darted over to Gunsmoke. "We shouldn't have told him."

Gunsmoke's chair creaked as he leaned forward, put his elbows on the table. Dark eyes studied Freddie and the younger man tried his best to ignore them. Freddie looked over into the living room, saw the TV. The news was still playing there, its volume low but everything was so quiet here at the table, that he could hear it. There was some kind of breaking news update.

Freddie recognized the clip he'd seen in Spencer's apartment and had mistaken to be the latest episode of _Cult Busters_. It showed candid shots of suburbia edited together with people being put into police cars. The bottom of the screen said, _notorious cult known as_ _The Children disbanded?_ Then, suddenly, there was a huge crowd of people outside a prison in Utah. They'd just executed someone in there, sparking a protest. It was breaking news.

The reporter was interviewing a teenaged boy. Ticker tape across the bottom of the screen named him Jethro Denis, _son of criminal, successor of a throne?_ The teenager proclaimed himself the new king of his father's dream, the new prophet among _The Children. _The old prophet was just executed and apparently, half of the cult was not willing to begin following this Jethro kid. They held signs that said things like Not The True Son. We Want The Real First Son. Where Is Our Prophet? Find The True Son! Jethro, all of sixteen years old if a day, was vowing that they would all go to hell for their heresy against him; he had crazy eyes.

He had Freddie's eyes.

Freddie couldn't look at the screen anymore, turned away with a dry swallow. Wait—Spencer watched _the news_ while sculpting? Freddie frowned. He'd always thought Spencer's sculptures were inspired by things like stuff you stepped in, not actual _events_. Spencer was a weird dude sometimes.

"Fred," Gunsmoke said, firmly. Freddie looked over at the man in surprise. Fred. Not Freddie or Fredward, or FredWeird, or Freddiccini ,or Freddifer. Just Fred. No one had ever called him that before. "They aren't going to find you."

Freddie nodded, though he was pretty sure the reassurance had been more for his mother. _He_ didn't need reassuring. He _didn't_. He noticed the time on his phone in front of him. Their story had taken a while. It was nearly time for school to be out. His hands shook and he gripped his phone to hide it. With the screen saver gone, he could see the background photo. One he'd snapped of him and Sam on his pillows the other night.

"You must have questions," Gunsmoke said, pulling him out of the picture and the memory it evoked. He looked up at Gunsmoke rather blankly, shrugged. "No. I get it."

He did. The security systems, the rules, the channel blocks, all of it to keep him away from anything to do with—all of _that_. Despite the hot churning in his stomach, his eyes went back to the TV screen. They were discussing the late prophet of The Children, Freddie's father.

He'd been in and out of prison over the years for sexual abuse and drugs, but he'd always gotten right back out… Freddie realized that every release date coincided with Gunsmoke's trips to the states, with the exception of the Smoothie crime fiasco, but now Freddie understood that that had nothing to do with a petty thief and everything to do with his recognizable face broadcasted on every TV in the state.

But now the man was dead, lethally injected to carry out the death sentence served him after he was convicted of twelve counts of first degree murder. They'd found shallow graves near where the cult lived, apparently. There was speculation still about how many bodies there were or who some of them were. One thing not in question: Freddie's father put them there. _Disobedience must be punished_, he'd said as his last words.

"Freddie, are you okay?" Marissa asked. He looked at his mother without seeing anything, didn't even really hear the question. Gunsmoke knocked on the table to get his full attention. Freddie jumped. Then a stray comment from the news penetrated his daze.

A news reporter was interviewing the leader of the protesters. It was a man who was very calmly explaining that the firstborn son would not have died, even if his mother was one of the unidentified bodies from the graves, the boy would have risen and returned to them. Whether or not the traitor wife tried to murder her own child or not, the boy would have risen. The true son was out there, waiting. He would return to them and then Jethro would be sorry he ever made these claims.

Freddie's heart started thumping loudly. The eerie calmness with which the man spoke sent chills over Freddie arms and neck. The words _risen_ and _waiting_ and _return_ crowded his head. The TV was showing Jethro again, his eyes so much like the one's Freddie saw in the mirror every day.

"They aren't going to find you," Gunsmoke said again in the reassuring tone of voice he'd used in Spanish-whispers. "Jethro and his mother are claiming Marissa miscarried, that she'd cheated on the prophet anyway so none of it matters. It's what they do, they spin lies to get whatever they want. To those who believe every word out of Jethro's mouth, logically the only place either of you can be is in one of those graves."

Freddie nodded. If he kept nodding then maybe Gunsmoke would stop talking about it, trust that Freddie got it, didn't need to hear anymore. But the man kept talking—again almost more for Marissa's sake. She'd started shaking when Gunsmoke mentioned graves.

"The other faction won't find you either. They don't care about your mother, to them she was just a vessel, one of many. Their prophet promised that The Blessed One will one day find them. Seventeen years ago, they thought it meant he would arrive as a child, but now they are more prone to believe that he will appear to them a man, like Jesus or something. You know, in the Book he's twelve years old and then suddenly thirty-three," Gunsmoke shrugged in a You-can't-get-any-crazier-interpretations-of-scripture-than-that kind of way. "It's all a test of faith to them. They can't go looking for The True Son or it'll be like they don't believe he'll come."

Freddie had accidently looked at the TV again. Now it was showing a group of women, they looked like they ranged from his age to Marissa's. The ticker tape still ran the same old thing—_Self-proclaimed prophet dead, son struggles to retain power_—nothing about what or who these women thought they were. They seemed to be making a unified statement but only one of them was speaking.

Freddie heard enough to gather that this was Jethro's mother, and that her '_sister wives_' believed Jethro Denis was the true son. They were all crying for the man who had just been executed, like none of it was fair.

Sister wives. That kind of thing wasn't real. It was something out of history, from one of those crazy time periods where laws and social customs were still getting the kinks worked out. It didn't actually happen anymore. It was just plot for a popular HBO series, how could this be happening?

"How did you ever…" Freddie's question tumbled out of his mouth ahead of his brain. He stopped, wondered what he'd asked, then heard it sitting on the dead air around the table. He looked at his mother, really looked at her, for the first time in his life.

She looked ashamed, scared, angry, and sorry. She shook her head, couldn't look at anyone. She scrapped at her thumbnail as she spoke with a shaky voice out of dry trembling lips.

"You know most people run away _to_ the circus. I ran away _from_ it. I didn't care where I ended up, I just wanted a different life, a normal one with a house and a yard. I was only sixteen, Freddie. I didn't know the first thing about the world. I thought I did, I'd traveled all over it, but I didn't know the people in it. I didn't know monsters really existed." She swallowed. A couple of tears suddenly raced each other down her pasty cheeks.

Gunsmoke sat with his arms crossed, his attention locked on her like he was getting instructions again.

"I was so ready to belong somewhere I joined the family before I knew how—" she swallowed again, gave a jerky shake of the head. "On the surface, when things are going their way, they can be so perfectly normal the rest of the world just seems wrong. This," she motioned to the TV, the clips of a riot that had broken out, and shook her head again. "This kind of stuff took a while to show itself. It wasn't until he chose me as his newest bride that-" her voice cracked and she stopped talking like she might throw up.

After several long moments of silence in which she privately collected herself with a fist pressed against her lips, Gunsmoke filled the silence with what he knew to be true.

"She didn't have the power to say no to a man like that. It was safer for her to do what he wanted. But then, one day it was safer for _you_ if she did the right thing. So she got out."

_She got smart._

The news cut away from the riots to mug shots of an older man with Freddie's eyes and hair color, except there were frosty highlights and lines and wrinkles. It was an _old_ man. This whole time Freddie had assumed his father was someone young like his mother or Spencer, like Carly had loosely guessed. Just like he had assumed that the man had left. Wrong on two counts. What else was he wrong about?

"Did you love him?" he asked.

Gunsmoke and Marissa looked quickly at each other, lost and bewildered by the question. They said nothing. They didn't know how to answer. Freddie sat like a stone, growing heavier by the second. Didn't _anyone_ know what love was? Finally, she spoke very slowly and chose her words carefully.

"I thought very highly of him."

What did that even mean?

"At first…I felt honored to marry him."

_Then she didn't._

Freddie's confusion must've registered in his expression, because his mother seemed to make a decision and shook her hair back from her face as she looked Freddie in the eye and all at once just said it—her darkest secret. "Sometimes you make it impossible to forget the things he did to me. Sometimes you look so much like him that I feel you're _unclean_. You can't possibly be clean, not after… how you came to be."

Freddie blinked. It was a slow motion flinch. It would have killed him, if he could understand what she was talking about. He did but he didn't. He got it, but it wasn't landing. It buzzed around his head like a loud insect, pinching old memories. Getting sent to his room for no reason, getting woken up in the middle of the night because he had to take another shower, couldn't ask questions, just had to sign the sheet that said he double-shampooed.

She had a reason. This whole time, her crazy had a reason and it was him. It was his eyes. It was his fault.

Gunsmoke seemed to read his mind. "It's nothing you do, she didn't mean that. It's just one of those things. She loves you," he shot a look at Marissa who nodded quickly.

Freddie stood. "Yeah," he said.

Gunsmoke stood too. Freddie fell back a few steps from the much bigger man. "I'm fine." He had to swallow because his throat was dry. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Freddie—"she began, but he stooped and kissed her forehead. "Thanks for telling me mom."

He turned, pushing up his sleeves, headed for the door.

"_A donde vas_?"

"Huh?" he whirled.

"Where are you going?" Gunsmoke repeated in English.

He shrugged, plucking his apartment key from the table by the door. "I'm going to see a movie with some friends."

Marissa stood, shot worried looks at Gunsmoke. As Freddie said goodbye to his mother, tossing over his shoulder the usual _love you_'s and promises to be careful, both of which she ignored as she begged him to stay, Gunsmoke grabbed his coat and followed. Freddie knew he would. It made sense now. He wasn't there to keep him from Sam, how childish was that? He was there to keep him from…

What was Sam doing right now?

He walked alone—as alone as he could with Gunsmoke tailing him—for a while. Out in the fresh air that smelled of oncoming rain, he pulled out his phone and texted his friends. _Let's see a movie._


	9. Chapter 9: iFreak Out

**Chapter 9: iFreak Out**

_Warning: implied rape, nothing explicit, though_

His friends were waiting outside the movie theater. Gibby was holding Carly's hands behind her back as Spencer poked at her ribs with a toy shark on a stick. Sam had been sitting on Carly's feet to keep her from kicking her brother, but upon seeing him, she leapt up and detached herself from the scene of squealing teenagers and a grown man not acting his age.

Her face was flushed with mirth, "Hey," she breathed when she reached him, then she frowned. "What's up?"

"Nothing," he said, clearing his throat. He wanted to tell her. But not yet. Anyway, now wasn't the time. He laced his fingers with hers, deliberately wouldn't look when he saw Gunsmoke slide into his peripheral field of vision. He jerked his head towards the theater. "Wanna go in get some popcorn and seats?"

"Yeah,"

As Freddie and his girlfriend headed for the ticket booth, Gunsmoke put himself at the corner where the brick of the building became the inviting front glass doors of the theater. He leaned there, made himself comfortable. He wouldn't be going in, never cared for cinema. Too dark. Too crowded.

When he heard Freddie ask for tickets to the new _Cult Busters_ movie, he straightened, noticed for the first time the big promotion poster. It was rated R. Gunsmoke swore profusely in Spanish. Had he known he would have stopped the boy from picking that one—He probably picked it thinking it'd help, thus proving he wasn't too young to see that kind of thing, but that he was too young to know it wouldn't help him cope.

Ah, well. He had to face it some time.

…

"Are you sure you're okay?" Sam asked once they were in their seats. Carly, Gibby, and Spencer took seats around them. She spoke lowly, so they wouldn't hear. They were too busy having an argument about whether or not the lead of this movie could possibly hold a candle to Melancholy so they wouldn't have heard anyway.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he lied. She squeezed his hand. Her face was serious with concern. She was not buying it.

"You're hands are shaking."

He looked at her, fully into her eyes. God, she was pretty. He gave her a weak smile, "I _will be_ fine," he corrected.

She frowned, and he wanted to tell her. He could see that it was hurting her that he wasn't. He leaned in, gave her a little kiss. "We'll talk later."

…

By the time the previews were over, Freddie had successfully slipped back into his old life. He was just Freddie again, seeing a movie with a bunch of friends, learning that just because they were a serious couple now did not mean Sam was going to share her popcorn and milk-duds.

Then the movie started with a revamped version of the series theme song. After some powerful wailing from a guitar, the familiar notes finally played. Unable to help themselves, and convinced the whole rest of the theater would do it too anyway, Freddie's group sang along.

"_Ba-da-da Ba-da-da BOWM_ CULT BUSTERS!"

It drew some laughter from the rest of the audience, who'd remained respectfully silent. Freddie laughed, embarrassed but tickled. God it felt good to laugh. Spencer apologized for everyone loudly as a Fake Melancholy began the usual monologue.

It was already way different than anything they had expected. For one thing, it was turning out to look more like a Hero's Origins kind of film. Melancholy was at this moment just a miserable mail carrier. A handsome man was doing nothing but walking in a bored fashion down a sunny sidewalk, but Sam had already turned away from Freddie to giggle with Carly.

Freddie rolled his eyes with Spencer. It was still in that grey area where no one knew if they really liked this movie or not. Freddie was thinking not, if the voice-over was going to be an on-going thing. The director had decided to take the show's monologue and make it his thoughts as he stuffed envelopes in mailboxes and avoided scary dogs—kinda weird, considering he wasn't a hero yet.

Then Selma Heyak came on screen, dashing out of the house in a flowing spring-time skirt and strapless shirt, eager to get her mail. Freddie, Spencer, and Gibby became more alert. Carly rolled her eyes and Sam dug an elbow into Freddie's arm.

"Ow, what?"

She gave him a significant look, one he knew well. Her narrowed eyes and quirked lips only meant he was going to pay for it later. He could look forward to blue-cheese dressing in his shampoo again or something.

Freddie was having such a good time dividing his attention equally between Sam and Selma that he was not prepared for what happened next.

First of all, it looked like Freddie wasn't going to like this movie, because the voice-overs didn't just continue, but changed characters. Now Selma was narrating as the camera followed her back into the house.

Five minutes after that, the audience was dragged deep into the underworld of the cult hidden behind the picket fences, the cult poor Selma had unwittingly joined and was now trapped in. Freddie felt a sudden and unpleasant stir in his stomach and recent knowledge just almost spilled back into his brain.

It must have been the absence of the real Melancholy, but Freddie had somehow forgotten that this was first and foremost a movie about cults—strike that. Make that one cult, singular. The movie wasn't the adaptation of a full season of episodes, but the elongation of a single show. They were going to get all the ugly details of this cult and not from a little speech or poem from the victim, but blow-by-blow. They were going to live through it, in real time, with the victim.

Freddie gulped.

On the screen, Selma was giving her best uneasy smile, and some creep way too good at getting that psychopathic glint in his eye was saying something about promises and glory.

Freddie found Sam's hand in the dark, latched onto it. She looked at him, startled, but squeezed back. Things started getting bad for poor Selma up there, and Freddie decided to come back to the theater, back to his world, surrounded by friends and popcorn. Yeah, that helped. So long as he stayed aware that it was just a movie, he would be okay.

Not real.

Selma started crying. Freddie started shaking.

After a second, Sam handed him her peppy-cola. He took it, sucked at the straw eagerly. He had a bitter taste in his mouth.

On Sam's other side, Freddie could hear Gibby's low rumble of a voice as he spoke lowly to Carly, who'd covered her eyes the second Selma's skirt had been ripped from her body.

"'Sokay," Gibby was saying, "It's not as bad as you think. It—okay, just hold on for a sec, it'll be over soon."

_She didn't have the power to say no_ Gunsmoke had said. Selma was screaming the word, and not at all in a good way. It was muffled by her husband's hand. Freddie looked at the lid of his peppy cola.

"It's not really showing anything," Gibby was commentating. Carly still had her eyes closed.

"Hey be quiet back there!" an angry voice in the next row cried hatefully.

"What you need _silence_ for this love scene?" Gibby snapped irritably.

Spencer, tense and uncomfortable, finally became aware of the situation, leaned around Freddie to look at his sister. "You okay Carly?"

She nodded mutedly, eyes screwed shut. She took a quick peek, yelped and covered her face. Reflex made her friends look at the screen to see what she'd seen.

A lot of skin, awkward angles, gross noises.

Freddie looked away quickly. _Not real_, he reminded himself. He determinedly conjured memories of her other movies, of the other actor's movies. They were faking it up there, none of this was really happening. But this really happened in the world. All those episodes of _Cult Busters_, all of the first-hand accounts, swamped back into Freddie's head.

"What's happening now?" Carly asked. Her voice was louder than it needed to be because she had her hands clamped tightly over her ears and she thought she was whispering.

Selma had some fire, was fighting back. Things were knocked off tables and walls and her lip was busted. Facts were triggering in Freddie's head, exploding like bombs. He couldn't tell the difference between movie, theater and memory anymore.

_It was safer to do what he wanted._

"Ummmm," Gibby was trying to find a delicate way of putting it. "She's fighting him off now, looks like she's winning—oooh, no, don't look yet—"

_The things he did to me_.

Selma was still screaming.

_The way you came to be…you're unclean. _

Freddie felt a heave in his stomach that lifted him to his feet. He pushed quickly passed Sam's knees, Carly's, tripped on Gibby's.

"Dude, where'ya goin'?"

Freddie couldn't answer. He had to swallow, couldn't find the way out of this theater. Sam was calling for him. Carly must have peeked at the screen again because she screamed "GROSS!" as Freddie located the glowing exit sign, behind him someone shouted,

"Take you're little girl out of here if she's too young to see it!"

"That's it," Gibby said loudly, standing. "You and me, outside, right now! Spence, look out for Carly."

"Sure thing, kiddo!"

Freddie was jogging down the steps, turning down empty aisles, just trying to get to that door as quickly as possible, before he had to see another second of cult-life. The grotesque images grew and warped as Freddie's proximity and angle to the screen changed.

_You make it impossible to forget the things he did to me._

His stomach heaved again—as he jerked open the theater door, the movie sounds stopped, and Spencer's voice filled the sudden quietness.

"It's okay now you can look—OH MY GOD THAT'S HUGE! CARLY CLOSE YOUR EYES!"

…

Freddie stepped directly out onto the sidewalk, having used the fire exit. He made it to the trashcan in time. Night had crept in somewhere between popcorn and the previews. Now it was settled, thick, and smelled like rain. Freddie leaned over the can, tried to take deep breaths of anything but the smell he'd left splattered over the garbage.

Gunsmoke appeared at his side. "Talk," he said. Freddie shook his head, if he talked he'd puke again, if he talked, he'd shout, cry.

"What do you need?" Gunsmoke asked.

Freddie shook his head, managed to rasp, "To forget,"

"You can't." he said, "This is it, so suck it up."

Freddie lifted his head and peered up at him. Gunsmoke's features actually softened a little. Something drew his attention back to the fire exit door. Sam had just burst out, stopped dead when she saw Freddie wasn't alone. "Okay," Gunsmoke said, "You _will_ have to deal with this, but maybe not right now." He looked over at Sam, "Get over here, _bonita_."

Freddie straightened. Sam looked really worried, and eyed Gunsmoke with confusion, but for the first time in her life, she obeyed a direct order from an adult.

Gunsmoke's dark eyes looked her up and down as if he was appraising a soldier under his command. She was actually standing straight (it was hard not to in Gunsmoke's presence) so it was kind of like he really was. He jutted his chin towards Freddie.

"Distract him until he copes with it, even if it takes days, then make him talk about it."

She had no idea what was happening, but she nodded. Gunsmoke dropped a heavy hand on Freddie's back. "Go with your girl. I'll deal with Mary. Don't come home until you can talk to her civilly about this." His eye ticked and he said in a softer voice, "She's fragile when it comes to this."

Freddie nodded, his stomach lurching. Gunsmoke gave him a long hard look, then he looked at Sam, gave her a curt nod, and was gone. Sam watched him go, then turned back to Freddie.

"What is it? Who was that?" she asked. "Freddie, what the chiz is going on?"

Freddie wiped a hand across his mouth. It tasted horrible in there. He needed something to drink.

"Freddie?" she asked, offering him some mint gum to help with the puke taste in his mouth. Geezus, she really did have a sweet side. He took it gratefully, sank down onto a bus stop bench.

"Who was that guy?"

"That's Gunsmoke. You met him before."

"Oh, yeah, I thought he looked familiar. What's he doing here?"

"Mom called him after I asked about my dad."

Sam twisted suddenly to look after the soldier, "Is he your dad?"

"I wish," He looked up at her, eyebrows together. "I really don't want to talk about it right now, Sam." His voice cracked.

She looked at him a moment more, lips parted, blue eyes wide under a crinkled brow, then she looked around the street, like she was lost, scared, then back at him, nodded, "Okay."

He took her hand. He needed a friendly touch. He needed to know there was kindness in the world right now. She squeezed his hand said again, "Okay." But this time with an amused scoff. Freddie met her eye. She was smiling. He didn't know why. But he supposed she was smart, able to draw conclusions, and was now happily doing her duty as the distraction.

"Let's go." she said. He nodded as the bus pulled up.


	10. Chapter 10: iLove The Way You Distract M

**Chapter 10: iLove The Way You Distract Me**

Sam took him straight to Mall-Mart. It was late. He was never in Mall Mart this late. Freddie didn't even ask why they were there until he found himself in the bedding aisle. In front of him was a wall of sheets. He laughed, recalling her comments about his Galaxy Wars sheets. He picked some plain white ones and she rolled her eyes and put them back. He reached for some plaid ones and she slapped his hand away. Eventually, she picked out some that matched her eyes.

Dragging him along, she swung by the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for her mom, buying some condoms while she was there. (Freddie, with his fingers laced with Sam's, tried not to blush while Tracey-from-history-and-AP-English rang up the box.) He was so distracted by trying to play it cool, that he didn't even hear Tracey's question. He felt Sam tense beside him and snapped out of it.

"Huh?" he asked.

Tracey smirked at him, repeated, "Why weren't you in school today?"

"Oh, family friend in town," he answered evasively.

"Oh, well how is your genealogy project going?"

Like Sam's fist deep in his gut, all the breath rushed out of him. All that he was running from swamped back into his head. His chest felt heavy, his ears started to ring.

His dad was—no, no, his brain locked down like train wheels grinding to a halt, and then derailing in order to turn around and go back.

Sam's hand was in his. It was nice.

Tracey popped her gum, eyes wide as she sensed she'd said something she shouldn't have, though she was clearly confused about what that was. Sam scooped up her purchases and answered for him, by insulting the teacher who'd assigned it, and then they were leaving.

Freddie felt like he was walking in a trance on the way out. His eyes focused on random people, objects, but rejected all of them as a distraction. After the brightly lit world of Mall-Mart, he was surprised to be reminded it was dark outside. He tried to remember the last time he'd ever stepped out of this store to find it this dark, this late. He couldn't think of one.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked. He finally looked at her. Seeing her worried and kind expression shocked him out of it. If Sam was being human, it was time to make things go back to normal.

He drew in a deep breath, forced a smile and found it came easily now that he was looking at her beauty.

"Yeah," He said, then wagged his eyebrows in a way sure to get a rise out of her. "Let's go break in my new sheets."

Instead of hitting him, she frowned. With eyes sparkling, she asked, "What makes you think they're _your_ new sheets?"

Oh, man. He wondered if she did that low thing with her voice on purpose or if it was an accident, either way, it made Freddie want to go straight to her place, but she took him to the hardware store where she bought several cans of spray paint.

"What are these for?"

"Watch and learn, Fredly,"

They swung by her place, then. He really just wanted to stay there, but she told him to wait on the stoop and left him there, came back five minutes later with a bag slung over one shoulder. He didn't feel up to walking around when there was too much possibility of running into people, having to talk about things, answer questions about his absence from school, his project.

Back on the bus, then off the bus, then she led him around the side of a nice looking house.

"Sam," he hissed, "Who lives here? What are we doing?"

"Relax, no one's home." She said as they emerged in a back yard where an in ground pool was empty.

"Perfect," she said, hurrying down the steps of the shallow end. Freddie followed, nerves twisting his gut.

"Sam we can be arrested again," he said, "Let's just go."

She dropped her pack and pulled out the spray paint, tossed him one. He caught it, bewildered. She pulled the lid from hers and began shaking it.

"You can go home and deal with your demons," she said, the stirring ball rattling around in her can, "or you can stay here and help me deal with mine."

Alarmed, he looked back at the house. It was two stories, impressive, _expensive_. All the curtains were drawn and no lights were on. "Who lives here?"

"Let's just say he's not the sweetest guy in the world."

"Sam, what?" he started with a heavy jolt in his stomach. Suddenly he was remembering how she'd randomly put her foot through some glass and then blamed her mother.

"We're here to treat the rest of the things he paid for like the way he treated my mom." She said. "I don't know what he did exactly, but she only gets that drunk afterward when it's bad."

Freddie's throat was dry when he swallowed. He shook his head, to dislodge images from the movie, and thoughts of his own mother's past. "Couldn't we just call the police or—"

"Yeah, and get my mom arrested, too." She snorted, rolled her eyes, "Use your brain."

Freddie stood dumbfounded as she descended into the deep end of the pool and pressed on the nozzle of the spray paint, making wide sweeping arcs as the can hissed. She worked fast. She was no stranger to painting with a spray can.

In the dim light of neighboring floodlights, steady black lines spelled out WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF HIV, HOBKNOCKER and below it, she'd drawn the outline of an erect penis. She stepped back, falling into the space beside him, frowned at it. Freddie was impressed. It was grotesquely lifelike, and she'd made various parts out of proportion.

"Looks just like ya, Fredbag."

"Haha,"

She went back to work, now with different colors, filling it in and adding dimension and even character. He asked, "Does your mom really have HIV?"

She didn't turn, or even pause in her work, "Got it last year."

"I'm sorry." He said. He hated that she wouldn't turn to look at him, that she kept working like they weren't talking about something that had to have been traumatic for her to hear.

"It's manageable." She growled. "And the jank part is that this dishrag probably doesn't even have it. For all of her faults, forgetting to keep up with her meds isn't one of them." She sighed, wiped a wrist across the back of her forehead to move her hair. Her can clacked as she shook it and then the hissing returned.

"It's not fair my mom can get it and people like him can get away scot-free."

Freddie slid down into the deep side to join her, put his hand on her shoulder, "Why didn't you tell me when you heard?"

"It wasn't your business then." She said with a shrug.

"Just because we weren't together then, doesn't mean I didn't care about you then. You should have told me."

Sam shot him some shy sideways looks, shrugged like it was no big deal. Freddie decided to lighten the mood, pushed an elbow into her side, "And, hey, maybe this jack hole _isn't_ scot-free."

"Here's hoping," Sam smirked.

"And anyway," Freddie said. "When we're done here, he'll _definitely_ be paying for it. That's something."

"We?" she said with a glint in her eye, "Does that mean you're done just standing there like a nub?"

He gave her a cocky sideways smile, "Hey, this ain't my first vandalism, honey."

She laughed, eyes still on the image coming to life under her skilled work with a nozzle. "You've never vandalized anything in your life!" she scoffed.

"Shows what you know," he said. He handed the can over, adding, with a motion to the penis, "It's a masterpiece, Sam. I'd ruin it."

She took the can, frowned, "What's that supposed to mean, not your first?"

He went back to lean on the drop off. "I drew on a stall wall in the eighth grade."

She laughed, "God, what a dork!"

With a final flourish at the end of a long white streak, she was finished with the crude image. She put the cap back on and joined him on the drop off. Looking at it, Freddie hoped curious children didn't live in this house. If any did, he did not want the job explaining the picture to them.

"Now the fun begins," she said, pulling out a baseball bat. She handed Freddie a hammer.

"Break everything you can," she said, "then we run."

He nodded, adrenaline suddenly coursing through his veins. He wanted nothing more than to break something right now. He let himself think of the things his mother and Gunsmoke had told him, of the news clips, and the things the Cult Buster's movie had helped him realize. They fueled his rage, which he then happily took out on the tiles of the patio, the glass tables, and finally the windows of the house.

Alarms pierced the air and then they were running.

…

He didn't trip this time. Running with Sam was wonderful. Exhilarating. Though there were none, he felt the cops closing in on them. He felt the fear of being caught, felt the determination not to be, ran harder. Fire burned in his legs and lungs. It felt good, he let it envelope him as he ran with Sam beside him. Laughing, breathless, she was leading him through backstreets as dark as the rage he'd felt only moments ago, but that he now felt fall away with every sprinting step away from the destruction.

They didn't stop until they were in Sam's apartment. They collapsed against the door once it was closed behind them. Freddie was laughing uncontrollably. He was aware he probably sounded insane, and honestly, he wasn't so sure that wasn't far from the truth. He slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor. Sam sat beside him, panting and laughing, too.

He laughed until he couldn't anymore, then hung his head and tried to regain his breath. He pulled in breath after breath, but it never seemed to be enough. For a moment, he felt like he might cry, but he fought it back and focused on the feeling of Sam beside him, and on breathing.

It smelled nicer than one would think in the Puckett apartment. The way Sam often went on about the place, it was easy to get carried away. But Pam kept a decent house. It smelled like Sam.

She stood, kicked him in the thigh. "Get up, ya freak."

Ouch. The kick really hurt. He stood, massaging the bruise and grumbling. Like he always did ever since they'd finally cracked the mystery of what Pam did for a living, Freddie felt weird being in Sam's apartment. The apartment was small, the front door opened into a little hallway before becoming the living room.

Sam was already on her way through the living room to the kitchen. Her room was down the hall on the other side. Freddie followed, counting on one hand the times he'd been in Sam's room. Carly had always been beside him. Her mom had always been home, too, and none of the visits had really been visits, just quick in-and-outs.

He was just about to ask where her mom was when the way Sam was walking changed and Freddie noticed that it was because someone was in the living room. Sam, walking like Tough Sam again, walked right on by without even acknowledging him. The guy's eyes followed her for a moment before finding Freddie behind her.

"Sup?" the stranger asked with a friendly nod. His eyes were droopy.

Feeling weird, Freddie's manners had him answering before he could help himself. He mumbled some appropriate answer, noticing even as he did so that the guy's eyes were back on Sam. A moment later, they were down the hall and in Sam's room. She shut the door behind them, and Freddie couldn't tell if she was being quieter than usual or if it was just his imagination.

She was kicking off her shoes, closing blinds. Her room being none of anyone's business but her own, it was not near as clean as the rest of the place. Clothes littered the floor, peppy cola bottles peeked from under the heaps. A stereo was set up in the floor under the window.

A dresser had drawers sitting crooked on their tracks, jeans peeking out. A little TV was perched on top, surrounded by DVD boxes. The bed was a twin sized mattress down on the floor without a bed frame. It wasn't made. The sheets were—Freddie snorted, "_Girly Cow sheets_?"

"Shut up," she growled, sinking to her knees to rip the pink and purple sheets from her mattress. "Carly got them for me as a joke."

"Uh huh," Freddie said. A lull fell in which his eyes drifted back to the bedroom door, like he could maybe see through it to that creepy guy in the living room. Sam's eyes flicked involuntarily in that direction as well, but with a deliberate, deep breath, she visibly shook it off.

Freddie forced air through his nose. "So, who was that, your mom's boyfriend?"

Sam lifted her eyes to him in a deadpan glare. "Mom doesn't have boyfriends, remember?"

Freddie's stomach tightened and he gulped. "She brings the guys _here_?"

She shrugged. "It's just—whatever," she shook her head, wouldn't look at him.

Freddie didn't know what to say. Things were clicking into place, more things about his friend explaining themselves.

Sam Puckett never went home after the sun was down, either going while the sun was still up or crashing at Carly's, or walking around Mall Mart all night. People thought she just liked to break curfew or was too lazy to walk home sometimes. That was the mask. The real face behind it was simple, a girl who didn't like being at home at night.

There was only one instance that Freddie could recall her heading home after sunset and it was just the other day, when she'd asked him to walk her. She had tried her best to stall actually getting there, ended up breaking public property and getting arrested. And it was because she didn't want to walk through the front door if Pam's clients were there, preferred already being shut up back here when they arrived.

With a kick to his gut like her foot through that glass, he realized Sam wouldn't have come home tonight if she wasn't being forced to take care of him. It made him feel bad but special at the same time. After all, she didn't _have_ to do what Gunsmoke told her to do. Then again, she wouldn't feel obligated to if he could just handle it himself.

With a deflating kind of resignation, Freddie decided that maybe he should be going this alone. The last thing he wanted to do was ruin everyone else's life just because his was…

His brain rejected the idea of settling on the new disturbing facts about his life. Self-preservation instinct had him changing his mind so quickly his head actually turned. Nope, still not ready to face it.

His spastic flinch had gone unnoticed. Sam still wasn't looking at him. She'd crawled over to a pile of junk, unearthed a stack of CDs, and was now going through them as if she'd never really seen any of them before. He would have believed she was fine, but her eyes flicked up to the door one too many times.

Freddie wished he could say something to take her mind off the creeper in the living room as effectively as she'd taken his mind off his troubles—the rush of vandalizing was addictive, he kind of already wanted to do it again. No wonder she had a criminal record.

A light laugh suddenly bubbled out of him. She looked up in surprise. He shook his head. "I just finally got you," he explained with a smile.

Her eyebrows crunched together, and she huffed. One corner of her mouth twitched. "Okay…"

"Give me those," he said, squatting and snatching the CDs from her. "I'm pickin' the music."

"You're not qualified to pick good tunes," Sam said, snatching them back. On any other day Freddie would have known better than to go into it with her, but she needed a distraction as badly as he did.

He snorted. "Well neither are you! Look at that, nothing but Cuddle Fish! They suck!"

She scoffed and punched him on the shoulder. "Take that back, they rock!"

Freddie laughed and held up the CD, where the lead singer's face glowered seductively from the album art. "Look at that fudge bag!"

"Like you're not secretly in love with him like all the other girls, Freddifer."

Her phone buzzed then with a text. Freddie imagined it was from Carly—the movie would be over by now—asking where they'd gone. They were meant to go back to the studio after the movie to plan for the next show, but no way could he handle so many friends. He'd spazzed just talking to Tracey, and she didn't even know him like Carly or Gibby or Spencer.

As Sam's thumbs flew over her keyboard, Freddie slapped the offending CD into the slot and hit play. With nothing else to do, his eye fell on the MallMart bag and the bare mattress. He crawled over to the bed and ripped open the new sheets, fanned them out and began making up the bed.

He bobbed his head to the music as he worked, hearing the hum of another text periodically, followed by Sam's keys ticking faintly. He tried not to think about what she was saying to get them out of it. Instead, he focused on the bed. He'd gotten the fitted into place and was spreading the sheet out when he realized Sam had put down her phone and was watching him.

He looked up. She was watching his forearms (bare from his pushed up sleeves) as he stretched to put the sheet in place. She was wearing a little smile—one of the new ones, an approving one. He gave her one back.

She leaned in and kissed him lightly. This was what he needed, what he craved. Her—her touch, her smell, her taste, her body. Vandalizing some dishrag's house had been distracting, but she was true escape. He was well aware that all they needed to do was fall forward off their knees and they'd be in bed.

She pulled away, said, "I'm hungry," Gave him a shove, "go make me a sandwich."

He laughed. But she was serious. He tried to refuse, but her look was dangerous and sent slices of fear through him like in the old days, only this time he wasn't afraid she'd break him arm—not when there were other things she was allowed to touch now.

He stood, went to the kitchen to make the sandwich. Not because he was weak and obedient, he told himself, but because he was hungry too, and wouldn't mind a sandwich. Plus, he'd remembered the guy's over-dilated eyes following her and didn't blame her for not wanting to venture out again.

No one was on the couch. For a moment, he saw no sign that anyone had even been there, but then he noticed light under the bedroom door on the other side of the living room. Gulping, he put it out of his mind, focused on gathering what he'd need to make the most awesome sandwich in the world.

There were no doors on the cabinets in the Puckett kitchen, so he found things easily enough. A lull in the music was Sam changing CDs, then it came back twice as loud. Freddie dumped everything onto the counter, couldn't stop himself from glancing at Pam's bedroom door to see if the blasting music was somehow disrupting—whatever. It wasn't.

Then he realized that it was his favorite song playing. He wondered if Sam knew that. He couldn't ever recall having told her, but it was his ring tone so maybe she just knew. He had to shove a lot of boxes of cereal and things out of his way to make enough room for the sandwich on the counter.

As he worked, he decided he didn't like Sam hiding in her own house. It was wise while she was alone (those eyes following her made his jaw clench) but she wasn't alone now. He was here with her this time. So when he had her food prepared, he perched on a counter stool and sank his teeth into his half, called past the food in his mouth, "It's ready!"

"Bring it here!"

"No!" he barked back. "Civilized people eat at the table!"

"Bring it to me, Freddifer!"

"Come and get it, ya lazy!" he bellowed back, and then took another bite, making yummy noises as loudly as he could. The music volume dipped low and Sam said, laughing, "Seriously, Freddie, bring it to me."

Intrigued by her laughter, the lack of a nickname for him, he slipped off the stool and headed back to her room. He left the sandwich on the counter. She'd won by making him fix it, and he intended to win by making her work to get it. If walking twelve feet could be called work. He pushed open the door, which she'd closed.

The sight that met him made him swallow the last bite of sandwich. Holy Build-A-Bra, that was the best underwear he'd ever seen. She grinned up at him, her blond hair splayed out across the new sheets, but that grin died the moment she saw his empty hands. Sexy Tease went away, Tough Sam came back, "What the hell? Where's my sandwich?"

He ran and got the sandwich, ran back, trailing black olives and bits of turkey. The music had returned. She smirked at him when he reentered the room at break-neck speed, stopping when his shoes hit the side of the mattress, wind-milling a little so that he wouldn't fall on her. While being down there was the plan, falling wasn't the desirable way.

"God, you really are a _nub_." She laughed, propping up on an elbow, reaching up for the food. He handed her the sandwich, shut the door, pulled off his shirt. "And _you_ are the best friend I've ever had." He said.

"Mama's your best _everything_, Freddifer." She said as he lay next to her, pulled her up against him. His hands roved over all the bare skin and silky under things of Sam. He kissed her ear, nibbled on it lightly. She took a bite out of her sandwich, ignoring him completely.

He laughed, typical, settled in to wait for her to finish eating. Until then, he was happy to trace her body with his fingertips. She made plenty of satisfied noises, but he wasn't sure if they were because of what he was doing or the sandwich. He'd made the sandwich, so he decided to be pleased with himself regardless.

With the loud music pounding his eardrums, her skin beneath his fingers, Freddie was successfully drowning in all the wonderful things in his life while the new and bad things stayed easily forgotten. When his fingers played with the edges of her underwear, she drew in a sudden deep breath.

"This is the life," she sighed past a mouth full of turkey. Freddie laughed before he could stop himself and she frowned at him. "What?"

"Nothing," he said with a grin, and lifted his head, took a bite of her sandwich.

"No, what?" she asked, and he must have gotten her worried because she didn't even object to the stolen bite. He waited until he'd swallowed before answering. She studied him with a guarded look until then. Did she think he'd been laughing at her or something?

"I just never thought it'd be like this between us." He reassured. "That you'd say something like that and actually mean it."

She rolled her eyes, turned away to put the rest of her sandwich on the bedside table, no plate, no napkin, just on the bare wood. She turned down the music ever so slightly, to make it easier to talk, "I was being sarcastic."

"No you weren't." he said softly as she turned back to him. Her eye met his and she blushed, looked away, "No I wasn't." she agreed.

Freddie lost his breath. She was so beautiful when she did that, when she told the truth despite herself. A surge of tingling things welled up in his chest, a hundred things he wanted to say, but all he was able to put into words was her name.

He said it breathily, putting his forehead to hers, closing his eyes and sinking into the feeling of her. Up directly behind his feelings for the girl in his arms came his feelings for what he was running from.

"I wanna tell you about it," he heard himself say, and her hand went to his cheek, stroked it encouragingly. He opened his eyes, hated that they stung with tears unshed, "But," his voice cracked. She hushed him softly.

"We don't have to talk about it yet, Freddie." She said. "I think I get it, anyway."

All at once, he remembered the pool they'd vandalized. _I don't know what he did, but she only gets that drunk when it was bad_. In the theater, she'd taken his hand. He'd assumed it was because she'd noticed him freaking out. But maybe not. Maybe she'd been too busy freaking out herself.

Sam was looking back at him with such a _kind _and _understanding _expression that Freddie had to close his eyes, breathe her name again because it was all he could say out of all the things inside of him. She grinned. Then, with shifting weight and smooth legs straddling him, she rolled on top of him. "Say my name like that again."

"Sam,"

She kissed him deeply, but then laughed, broke away and laughed some more, pushed her face into the pillows beside his head.

"What?" he asked. From his vantage, he could see her back curving down beyond her shoulders, and it was shaking with muffled laughter. She lifted her head to look at him smiling with her tongue between her teeth. "Just had the same pif-uh-nitty you just did."

"_Epiphany_," He corrected with a laugh. She narrowed her eyes and hit him in the chest, "Whatever,"

"What was your epiphany?" he asked as she teased him by putting her lips near but out of reach of his.

She shrugged, said like it was no big deal, "Never thought I'd like hearing you say my name so much,"

"Sam," he breathed with a lopsided smile, and she actually met his eyes, narrowed hers. "Don't abuse it."

"Sam," he breathed again before his lips met hers. She made a little noise, a surrendering kind of grunt, high pitched and even delicate sounding. She deepened the kiss. He rolled, pinning her to the mattress. "I found Puckett's weakness."

"Watch it, Benson," she warned without opening her eyes.

He wouldn't heed it. It was far too exciting to have something to bully her with for a change. He snaked his hands under her back, unhooked her bra and pulled it off. With the bra gone, he traced over her breasts, teased hardened peeks until she was wiggling. Trailing kisses down her jaw as his fingers trailed over her panties, he breathed her name again.

She arched her back, grabbed him roughly, growling, "I hate you," and then kissed him. He kissed back, eagerly accepting the wonderful, mind-wiping sensations that followed.

**Review about what made ya smile. Reviews make us smile and write more seddie**


	11. Chapter 11: iM Not Sorry

**Chapter 11: iM Not Sorry**

Sam's room was very bright of a morning. She had blinds, which blocked glare but not light. When he first became aware, he rolled, shoved pillows over his head to block it out, not at all willing to let go of his dreams. They'd been Sam-filled and wonderful. Wait. She moved beside him, her smooth bare legs entwining with his.

It hadn't been a dream.

He sank into memories of the night before, the overwhelming thrills that'd had sweet looks and sweeter words tucked into all the different folds…. It occurred to him that it was Tuesday, and simultaneously it occurred to him that he wouldn't be going to school for the second day in a row …

Next thing he knew, he was being pulled awake again, but this time not by light, by movement and voices.

Something jolted the mattress, which his face was pressed into. Sam's groggy voice swore at someone and told them to leave.

"Get up, Sam, we gotta leave in ten."

Freddie became aware that he was completely naked, that a sheet was covering his bottom and that was all. He lifted his face from the mattress and opened a bleary eye to look up at the intruder.

It was Pam. She was fully dressed in her usual fifteen-year-old style, standing over Sam's mattress, looking down at them. Her eyes roved approvingly over his bare back and he got the uh oh feeling.

Sam groaned, "Mom, God, can't you see we're trying to sleep?"

"I'm not letting another tooth fall out of your head, Sam," she said, "So get your ass up. Your appointment is in half an hour. We have to leave."

"I'm busy," Sam slurred as Freddie became fully awake and rolled over. Holy Chiz, he was naked with a girl, and the girl's mother was _right there_.

"Yeah, looks like it." Pam said with a smirk and her eye met Freddie's. She winked at him. He covered his nipples with the sheet. Pam turned and left the room, barking, "I'm serious, Sam. Ten minutes." She shut the door behind her.

Freddie sat up. The alarm clock said it was past noon. He should be in Calculus class, next to Germy and trying not to be sneezed on. Instead he was rubbing sleep from his eyes, naked next to Sam, not at all afraid to get anything of hers on him.

Their cloths were scattered in the floor around the bed. Sam was twisted in the sheets, her hair a tangled mess in front of her face. It took him a moment to realize she was awake and watching him from inside all of that hair.

"I've to go to the dentist," she pouted, even as her hand strayed up to the bedside table and found that sandwich she'd left there. She sank her teeth into it and said past it, "I hate the dentist."

Freddie looked at the door where Pam had just disappeared. It wasn't closed all the way. Being crooked on its hinges, it needed real force to actually shut. He was frowning. Pam had been so… casual. It made Freddie feel like The Naked Guy in Sam's Bed was old news.

"What?" Sam asked.

It was occurring to Freddie that he could have been assuming too much when _America Sings_ went to commercials. "I'm," he started, then asked, "I'm the first, right?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What makes you think otherwise?"

"Nothing," he said hastily, adding, "You're mom…"

She stood, ripping the sheets from him forcefully and leaving him sitting there completely bare in the morning light. Yikes. There was a first.

"I'm _not_ my mom." She snapped.

"I know!" he laughed. "Geezus, Sam." He stood, caught her wrist, "I was just trying to say your mom was so cool about finding us together that it kind of freaked me out. It was stupid. I'm sorry."

She accepted the apology but her guard was back up. He sighed. Dammit. He realized he was standing completely naked in the light of day in the middle of a bedroom. He felt a blush craw down his neck. Sam had seen it all, but it was weird being on display without the usual specific goals in mind.

Sam ran her fingers through her hair and scooped up some clothes, shook out the winkles. "I've got this stupid dentist appointment. I forgot all about it. Splatter cakes!"

Pam bellowed from the kitchen that they now only had five minutes. Sam looked pained. Freddie had heard about how freaked she got around dentists.

"I'll take her!" he called back as he scooped up his boxer briefs. He _just_ got the waistband up to his hips when the door opened again and Pam was in the doorway.

"Oh, so you get a fella and drop me like a bad habit." Pam said with a smirk. Her eyes were dancing as she looked Freddie up and down.

"Pretty much, yeah," Sam teased back as she pulled her clothes on.

"We don't hang out enough, ya little turd." Pam said, "I want to take you. We can make a day out of it or something."

"Sounds fun, mom," Sam said, her eyes darting to Freddie. He got it like a kick in the chest. If she made her mom happy, like she wanted to do, he'd be left to deal with things either on his own, or with Carly and Gibby and Spencer, who didn't understand.

"Why can't he come with us?" Sam asked.

Pam shrugged, jumped an eyebrow as her eyes found his biceps, "Sounds like a party."

…

"So how long's this been goin' on, eh?" Pam asked as she sped up to beat a yellow-light. Freddie tried not to grip the headrest in front of him or his seatbelt. Pam wasn't even looking at the road, she was grinning wolfishly into the rearview mirror. She glanced over at Sam, who was sitting sideways in the passenger's seat. "I mean, that your first go or what?"

Sam smirked. "No. That was last Friday."

Freddie would have objected to this discussion topic if he trusted himself to speak while Pam passed a car in a no-pass zone.

"What?" Pam asked loudly, "_Three days ago_ and you didn't even tell me?"

"You weren't exactly up for talkin' three days ago." Sam shot back, then added quickly. "Don't worry about him, though. Mama took care of it."

"_What?_" Pam demanded. "What did you do, Sam?" For a moment, she was filling the role of responsible parent to the brim, except that she swerved to avoid a stroller as she said it, which sloshed some of the responsibility out onto the floor. Freddie swallowed his tongue.

"Don't worry about it," Sam was saying, turning to look at Freddie. "We got away with it."

"We?" Pam asked, looking in the mirror as she braked for a red light with enough abruptness to lock Freddie's seatbelt. When her eyes met his, he felt the first jolt of regret for all the destruction he'd done last night.

"Sorry," he heard himself say, and Sam twisted up onto to her knees in the passenger seat to reach back and punch him hard in the arm. "Don't apologize!"

"I thought we talked about you keeping a clean record this year!" Pam cried.

"Oh, yeah," Sam said sheepishly, sliding back down into her seat. "That reminds me. We have to pay Spencer back."

"For what?"

"For bailing me out Saturday night."

"It was my fault," Freddie interjected as Pam gasped. He undid his locked belt so he could lean forward between mother and daughter, "I'll pay Spencer back. Don't worry about it Mrs.—Pam." He'd almost called her Mrs. Puckett, but something about the way they'd met that morning made that feel far too formal.

Sam scoffed at him. Freddie looked around at her and she tamed a smile, then the light went green and Pam's foot was on the gas once more. Geezus.

"Hey, Pam," He found his voice after the tires objected vocally to turning a corner with a curb in the way. "Why don't you let me drive?"

Pam pulled over, but didn't get out of the car, climbed into the back over the seats instead. Freddie got out and slid behind the wheel. Pam stretched out in the back as he adjusted his seat, adjusted mirrors and buckled up. Pam watched him and then hit in him the back of the head, "What's a good boy like you doin' goin' to jail?"

"Mom!" Sam cried, "Lay off, he's going through some stuff."

"Really?" Pam frowned, "What, do'ya think you're gay or something?"

Freddie laughed in surprise as Sam dropped her head back, "_Why_ would he have been with me if he thought he was gay?"

"Test run or something, I dunno," Pam said with a shrug.

"I'm not gay, Pam." Freddie said as he pulled back out into the street. He couldn't help but shoot Sam a secret look as he said it. She blushed.

"Then what is it?" Pam asked, leaning forward between the seats. She studied him from this close vantage point. That almost-fully-responsible parent was back. "Because I don't like that you're breaking laws. I was hoping _she'd_ learn something from _you_, not the other way around." She looked around at her daughter, "Carly's not been getting into trouble, too, has she?"

"No," Sam and Freddie said together and Sam continued, "Mom, It's fine. We're fine. No more trouble, I promise."

Freddie glanced at his Sam-girlfriend, knew that she meant the promise, but that she would break it easily enough the next time anyone hurt her mom. With the memories of how her lip had trembled when she admitted she couldn't live without her mother, he found he'd help her break that promise easily enough, too.

"What'd'ya do to get locked up?" Pam asked him. "It wasn't something as stupid as a dare was it? Because that's how it started for Sam."

"No, it wasn't a dare." He said, then added in a rush, "It's stuff to do with my dad, okay?"

"Oh…Parents getting a divorce?" Pam asked and Sam groaned as loudly as she could, a plea for her mom to drop it.

"They divorced a while ago," Freddie said, shooting a look at Sam that it was okay. He wanted to see how much of it he could talk about.

"What, is he remarrying then?" Pam fished with a laugh. She really wasn't going to drop it.

"He's _dead_." Freddie said abruptly. He glanced in the mirror and saw Pam's face fall, true regret painting her features. She put a warm hand on his shoulder. Sam's was suddenly on the crook of his arm.

"I'm sorry." Pam said.

"I'm not." Freddie said, and decided to speed through the yellow light.

…

"It's just a cleaning," Freddie said, lacing his fingers through hers. They were in the waiting room. The mingled smell of sterile instruments and spit stuck to the back of Freddie's throat. High-pitched drill sounds came from the back. He was glad this wasn't his appointment.

She shook his hand out of hers, scoffed. "I know. Don't baby me."

But she was bouncing her leg nervously.

Pam was still signing Sam in, flirting with the dental hygienist assistant who'd been up front filing files behind the receptionist desk and who had now forgotten his job completely. With a gulp, Freddie realized that the female receptionist was playing in the flirting game, too.

Okay.

Freddie's phone buzzed. It was a text from Carly. _Where are you two?_

He stared at it for a moment before answering, _with Sam at the dentist._

_Meet us after school to brainstorm iCarly ideas?_

Freddie's stomach dropped. He put his phone in his pocket. He hated ignoring Carly, but he didn't know what to say. _Probably not, I'm not finished forgetting_ Ha! She wouldn't understand.

Whatever Pam promised upfront paid off. They called Sam next, despite the people waiting ahead of her. Sam gave him a queasy smile and left with the assistant. Pam took the seat she'd been in.

"So," she said. Freddie tried to focus on the random magazine he'd picked up, but could feel her eyes on him. He looked up reluctantly. She was smiling wolfishly again.

"_You're_ Sam's type, huh?" she asked, looking him over appraisingly once more. "I never would have guessed it'd be a pretty-boy like you. And anyway, I always thought she hated you."

"She does," he sighed, tossing the magazine back to the table and leaning back with a smile.

Pam shrugged, "What are ya, a mas-a-fist?

"_Masochist_," Freddie corrected with a laugh, "And no." He pressed on his eyes, thought about it and had to add, "I mean, I don't know. Maybe. It's complicated, I guess."

"Uh-hmmm," Pam said with her lips pressed together. Freddie felt like he was getting on her bad side.

"I'd do anything for her," he admitted with mostly breath. Other things unsaid fluttered behind his ribs. He'd never said anything like that out loud before. It made it all this stuff with Sam all the more real. The corner of Pam's mouth twitched. "Even take the blame for getting arrested?"

"It really was my fault." He said. She didn't look convinced. He didn't try any harder to convince her.

"Who's idea was it to take care of ol' Max?" Pam asked. Freddie assumed that was the man who owned the pool they'd vandalized.

"Mine," he lied. She nodded, clearly not buying that either but understanding it all the same. She patted his leg. "You're a good kid, Freddie. Don't let Sam get you into too much trouble."

"Trouble might be what I need right now.' Freddie admitted aloud before he could stop himself.

"Trouble isn't what anyone needs," Pam said with true wisdom echoing in the words. She tilted her head, looked at him from that sideways angle. "Did you really hate your old man enough to mean what you said in the car?"

Freddie's stomach tightened. He'd have to get used to it. People had always asked about his dad before, they wouldn't stop just because now he knew something. He licked his lips, chose his words carefully, "Him and ol' Max would have gotten along fine."

Pam frowned, shrugged, "I've met your mom—crazy, but decent. I doubt she'd have picked an egg as bad as Max."

"What makes you so sure she picked him?" Freddie asked lowly. He felt a certain level of satisfaction as he watched it dawn on Pam that not all children are made out of love. Or even reckless, consensual lust. Fear, pain, hate, and greed for power. That would have been what Freddie was born of. His mouth filled with bile.

He stood suddenly, "I'm going to get some air."

Pam blinked up at him with wide eyes, jaw dropped in surprise. It was the look of someone looking at something entirely redefined. He headed for the doors and she called, "Well, hey, don't vandalize anything."

He tossed a laugh over his shoulder and decided he liked Pam Puckett despite her flaws. It was raining outside. He leaned on the cool bricks under the awning and pulled out his phone, replied to Carly's text.

_K. Smoothies after school?_

He didn't put that he really wasn't in the mood to finish the _Cult Buster's_ marathon, which they'd most likely do once they'd taken care of iCarly business. In fact, he'd probably never be in the mood to see that show ever again. He hit send and a moment later, she answered.

_Sure. You and Sam got some explaining about last night to do, tho_

_Sorry about that_, he texted back. He was already feeling like he might have to back out of these plans. Explanations weren't easy right now. He owed a few to Sam before anyone. He leaned his head on the bricks and closed his eyes, letting his mind drift over thoughts of Sam.

His legs were getting tired of just standing there when the doors opened up and Sam and her mother poured out. Sam was speaking harshly, "I don't know, _Geezus_! And don't put it like that, you make him sound like a freak. He'll tell me when he's ready, okay?"

She stopped abruptly upon seeing him. Pam did too. The three of them stood staring for a moment. Freddie tried a smile but it didn't feel like one. "What next?"

**If you're a Jane Lynch fan, you gotta have something to say. Let's here it for Sam's mom.**


	12. Chapter 12: iWill Tell

**Chapter 12: iWill Tell You Everything Now**

Next was the Crab Shack, where, while sitting in a booth, Freddie's hand—of its own accord—found itself sliding higher and higher up Sam's inner thigh and he paid for it by getting a bowl of Crab Sauce in his face, up his nose and in his eyes. He spent so long washing it all off in the restroom, that when he came back, mother and daughter were finished eating, daughter having even eaten the rest of his food for him.

When Freddie tried to explain to her that it was rude to eat someone else's crabs, an argument sparked that lasted until they got to the next stop on their Day of Fun. Freddie swallowed his tongue in surprise. Build-A-Bra. He trailed behind as mother and daughter built sexy underwear together. To his surprise, Sam wasn't the only one asking his opinion on how this looked or how that texture felt.

He couldn't help but laugh as other customers shot him curious sideways glances as he wagged his eyebrows and kissed Sam, but then declared to Pam on her latest choice that "Ooooo, yeah, that rocks!"

He was probably the only young man ever to come in here with mother _and_ daughter. And that was in a world with Gibby in it. So Freddie felt like he was making history. Weird history, but hanging out with Sam and Pam was too much fun to get bogged down in the weirdness.

…

After Build-A-Bra, school was out so they went to meet their friends in the Groovy Smoothie. Carly was surprised to find Pam with them, but went with Sam and Freddie's lead that it was normal. Gibby didn't need to follow a lead, welcomed the parent into their midst with an easy smile and an offer to buy her a smoothie.

"What's up?" Carly hissed to them, leaning in low over the table as Gibby distracted Pam.

Freddie shrugged with Sam as she said, "Just a mother/daughter day."

Carly met Freddie's eye with her eyebrow raised, "Wanna escape with us?" she asked, with a motion to Gibby.

Freddie shook his head, stuck his straw in his smoothie, "Pam's not that bad."

"_Pam_?" Carly echoed with a start and then Pam was at the table, asking loudly why no one had bothered to tell her when Freddie had "popped Sam's cherry." Freddie looked down with a guffaw, Carly blushed, and Sam threw a straw at her mother. Gibby put down his smoothie, eyes wide on Freddie.

"_What_?" he demanded. "Since _when_?"

"Oh, good, so I'm not the last one in the loop," Pam said happily.

"You're not even _near_ the loop, old lady," Sam teased as Gibby reached across the table and grabbed the front of Freddie's shirt in his fist, literally pulling him off his seat.

"Is this true?" he demanded.

"Gibby!" Carly cried as Sam leapt up crying, "What the hell?"

"She's just a kid!" Gibby cried loud enough for the whole room to look at them. Freddie looked around wildly for help, sputtered out, "She's _our_ age, Gib!"

Gibby released him, cracked his knuckles, "This is for Sam," he said but Sam caught his arm, "Gibby," she said with a laugh, "It wasn't like _that_!"

Gibby looked surprised. "Oh, it wasn't?"

Sam laughed, slapped him, "No, ya _freak_." She glanced around, added lowly, "I _let_ him."

"Oh," Gibby was suddenly his old easy self again, jumped his eyebrows at Freddie. Carly was still standing with her hands up, "_What_ was that about?"

Sam waved a hand to avoid answering but Gibby answered, "We had an agreement that'd I'd help her kill anyone who—"He glanced at Pam, said delicately, "was uninvited."

The memory of droopy eyes following her through the living room kicked Freddie in the chest. He looked from Sam to Gibby and back, wondered how many times stuff like that had to happen for her to get Gibby involved—and, wait a minute, did Gibby just put him, Freddie, in the same category as those creeps?

Pam laughed despite the obvious fact that she was the one putting her daughter in that danger in the first place. She clapped Gibby on the back, "I like you."

Sam was blushing, shaking her head and glaring at Gibby. He was oblivious that he'd spoken of something meant to be a secret. Sam met Freddie's eye, rolled hers, shaking her head. Freddie declared to the table, "_Moving on._"

"So why haven't you been in school?" Gibby asked. Freddie shrugged, "Taking some personal days, a kind of mental health leave."

He saw the looks Sam and Pam traded. Pam as wondering why he wasn't telling all his friends that his old man was dead. Let her wonder. It was none of her business. Thankfully, his cryptic answer launched Gibby into epic Gibbiness as he asked aloud why they called it a leave.

"What'dya mean, Gib?"

"Like, what's the metaphor?" he asked, "What do trees have to do with mental health?"

"Trees?" Carly asked, speaking for the whole table.

"Yeah, they call it a leave, like leaves of a tree."

Freddie smirked, "The singular of leaves is _leaf_, not _leave_."

"Oh," Gibby frowned.

"_So_," Carly said, another deliberate subject change as tended to happen a lot when Gibby picked the subject. She asked Sam, "Do'ya wanna know what happened at the end of the movie?"

Sam glanced at Freddie—she didn't know a lot but she knew that movie had plenty to do with it—but he'd been prepared for it. He gave her a little nod that no one noticed and she shrugged, "Sure."

As Carly launched into it, Sam's hand found Freddie's under the table. He traced her long thumbnail with the pad of his thumb as they listened, pretending to be interested. Gibby had missed a big part of it, apparently, though not as much as the guy who's lights he'd knocked out, so he asked a lot of questions that neither Sam nor Freddie were paying enough attention to ask themselves.

Pam listened with a frown, finally asked, "What the hell kind of movies do you guys watch?"

"It's _Cult Busters_," Gibby said, "Like the show Sambrose does."

"Oh!" Pam's face lit up, "I forgot Sammy does a show."

"You _forgot_?" Gibby echoed.

"We've been watching them on DVD," Carly said, then she turned to Sam and Freddie. "We were going to finish season eight tonight and work on the show. Wanna join us?"

Freddie and Sam shook their heads in unison as Gibby pulled Pam into an argument over how she was capable of forgetting the coolest man in the universe. Carly smiled knowingly at them, knocked her shoulder into Sam's, "Not done with the honeymoon phase, I see."

"Nope!" Sam chirped with a shrug and an immediate blush. Carly looked a little sad that her friends had better things to do without her. Freddie felt bad, but he wasn't sorry. He would never be sorry about alone time with Sam. Or being the one that made her blush.

The group was on the way out when Gibby pulled Freddie back and asked lowly, "You and Sam? Really?"

"Yeah," he said with a laugh. Gibby seemed truly perplexed by it.

"Why?"

Gibby shrugged, "Didn't know she liked guys."

That made Freddie burp up a kind of laugh question mark. After a failed attempt or two, he found his voice to cry, "But you've seen us kissing!"

Gibby shrugged again, "That's just kissing."

Freddie was flabbergasted. Gibby continued, oblivious, "And honestly—this is _not_ meant to sound mean—but… I don't know what you see in her. She's so… _Sam_."

It was too shocking to sound mean. Freddie's jaw dropped. Gibby didn't _see it_? Suddenly, Freddie realized that the rest of the world knew nothing of her shy smiles, her quiet confessions, her soft touches.

The world saw nothing but Tough Sam. It literally hurt in his chest, a good kind of pain, to realize that so much of her was his secret and his alone. He swallowed, shrugged as his eyes fell on her form walking ahead with her arms looped through Carly's and her mother's.

"Yeah, she is Sam." He said. Suddenly, he just _knew_ that he could talk to her about it, about all of it. Everything. It had to be hard for her to show him her delicate side. If she could do that, he could talk. He had her secrets; she should have his.

…

Sam got them out of doing iCarly stuff now since Pam was with them. So Carly and Gibby said goodbye and went to work on their projects, and to finish watching their newest obsession. Sam hopped on Freddie's back, giving him absolutely no warning so that he nearly face-plowed into the gutter. Pam caught him, kept him upright. Sam clung on and when Freddie got his balance, he held her by the knees and she gripped his shoulders.

"What now?" Sam asked her mother.

"Dunno, turd, What'dya wanna do?"

"I asked you."

"Let's go swimming!"

Sam grimaced, "Nah."

Freddie was too busy trying to pretend like it was easy to carry Sam on his back to give any suggestions of his own. He didn't really care what they did, anyway, because his mind was on way later, when he had Sam alone and could share everything with her… He was practicing how to word it in his head.

Just saying it in his head was hard, sparking anger and—

"Hey," Sam said in his ear. They were at a magazine stand. Pam was flirting with the guy who ran it. Sam had made a comment about Freddie that he'd missed completely. "You okay?" she asked.

"Better than ever," he answered, giving her knees a squeeze. She slid off his back, frowned through a smile, "What's going on?"

He looked at her contentedly for a long moment—she was really smiling, having a great time out with him and her mom. She was so pretty. Right as he opened his mouth to answer that he was just feeling less lost for the first time since the movie, a bang drew their attention around to Pam.

The magazine guy was closing up his booth, shutting shutters and rattling locks.

"What's up?"

"Sam, I'm going out with Eddie, here." Pam winked at the man as he hailed a cab. Sam's face fell. "But we were going to spend the day together, Mom."

"Well we spent most of it together," Pam said with a shrug. Sam shrugged, too, said, "Yeah, whatever. It was fun." But Freddie could see that she was hiding true hurt feelings. He felt the urge to say something to Pam, but he had no idea what it'd be. Pam slipped into the cab behind the guy and disappeared.

Sam watched the cab go with a clenched jaw. Freddie took her hand. "You okay?"

"Yeah, she does that sometimes." She said and he could see she was trying not to let it be a big deal. He gave her a hug, and she shoved him to end it. She was taming a smile as she did so.

With a sigh, she dropped down onto a bus stop bench. Freddie sat beside her and she slid down to lay on the bench with Freddie's thigh as a pillow.

He stroked hair from her face and a long moment passed while they just smiled at each other. She was still taming her smile, not letting it reach its full size, and her eyes were glinting. He recognized that her guard was up.

It took him a moment to remember why. Oh, yeah. That morning, from when he'd stupidly asked if he was the first guy she'd been with. And maybe that business in the Crab Shack as well…

He kicked himself. He really _was_ a nub, wasn't he? Looking down at Tough Sam, he longed to see _her_, the Sam behind those walls, the Sam whose beautiful girly-ness he'd been getting to know little by little ever since _America Sings_… She'd revealed so much of herself, it was time he returned the favor.

He drew a deep breath and dove right in.

"You know that stuff on the news about that protest over that guy they just executed?"

"I don't watch the news," Sam snorted, not catching on yet that this had anything to do with everything. Then she sat up with sheer core muscle to sit the proper way on the bench. "Oh wait, do you mean that prophet jerk who was all _disobedience must be punished_ before they killed him? Yeah, Spence made that cell phone sculpture because of it. He's calling it No Signal."

She picked up his arm and wrapped it around her, leaned into him, wrapped an arm around his waist, holding him tightly. She'd never held him like this in public before. She was trying something. He hoped she liked it, it was such a nice feeling, like she was claiming him as hers in front of the world, that Freddie wanted to close his eyes and think of nothing else. But he couldn't.

"From what Spence was saying," she was saying, "It sounds like the guy was a real freak. What about him?"

Freddie's eyes stung and he blinked to keep them dry. "That freak's my dad."

There was a beat. Then she pulled away, looked up at him with a scoff, "W-What?"

_You're unclean_.

His chest was tight. His eyes were burning. He rested is elbows on his knees, hung his head. "Mom left the circus when she was sixteen, but not to join Red Cross, to join his cult. She said he _picked her_ to be one of his wives and she didn't have a choice but to marry him. He was—" his voice broke and the breath his pulled in was shaking, he swallowed and continued, "Anyway, when she got pregnant with me, she left. Gunsmoke helped her get out. He took her to Venezuela so she could start over. That's why I was born there."

Sam's eyes were wide, her lips parted. She blinked, "Whoa."

"I used to imagine my dad was cool, talented, off saving people…" he pressed his thumbs into his eyes. "Instead, he was cruel and manipulative and destroying lives. He wasn't just in a _cult_, he was the freaking leader of it!"

"Um," Sam said, but Freddie cut her off. Now that he was talking about it, he couldn't stop. "He's dead now and I kinda wish he wasn't," He admitted, "Or that I could have met him before he was, so I could have shown him how—_unattached_ I am to him, could have told him to his face he was going to hell."

Hot tears were falling down his cheeks. He was shaking with repressed rage—images from that movie were burning in his mind. "Her life would have been like Cult Busters, that movie, all those episodes. That was how he treated her!" a sob escaped him, and then he was shouting, "he was insane, violent and cruel and she said I look like him! I don't want to look like him! I want nothing to do with him! I hate him!"

Sam looked scared—for herself or for him was unclear. She actually slid away from him on the bench, stared at him with wide eyes. Physically shaking, wanting to break something, hurt something so that it felt like he felt, even kill something so that other things would die besides him, Freddie pushed on his eyes, drawing deep breaths.

Freddie didn't blame Sam for looking scared. He'd scared himself. He didn't want to talk about it anymore. He wanted to stop crying, to stop shaking, to stop hating. He wanted Sam to hold him, but she just sat there, very still, trying not to look at him, but her blue eyes kept shooting him furtive sideways looks. She was redefining him just as her mother had.

Freddie's stomach turned and his heart broke. He didn't want to be redefined by this. And certainly not redefined in Sam's eyes. He stood.

"Let's go."

Freddie started to move, but his eye caught the hulky figure of a soldier crossing the street toward him. Cars slowed down for the mean pedestrian, and his boots thudded and squelched loudly against the wet pavement. Freddie gulped. Gunsmoke greeted them in Spanish.

The foreign words made Sam turn and when she recognized Gunsmoke, she went into a strange sort of slow motion. She didn't know if she should go or not. Freddie took her hand, pulled her back to the seat beside him. She sat like she would rather go. Then she squeezed his hand.

"How'd you find me here?" Freddie asked, looking for a street sign—honestly, he didn't even know where he was. Gunsmoke shrugged like it was child's play. It probably was; even on off days, he could find guerilla troops hiding in the South American jungle, it was absolutely no different than finding a high-schooler hiding in this dripping concrete one.

"Do you remember Sam? Sam this is," Freddie took a sudden deep breath, unsure of what to call the man. He settled with "Gunsmoke," but even that wasn't right, now that Freddie knew he wasn't just a babysitter all those years ago.

"Hi," Sam said. She extended a hand to shake. Literally. No trick-buzzer waiting to shock him, no smirk on her lips, she was honest-to-God requesting a handshake. She was meeting something like a real life cult buster, after all, like her father played on TV.

After the briefest hesitation (chiefly forged of the same shock Freddie felt) Gunsmoke clasped her hand and a firm handshake transpired. When it was over, Sam explained herself.

"He just told me…" She said it like it could get them both in trouble.

"And how's he handling it?" he asked. It irked Freddie that Gunsmoke spoke about him like he wasn't there, like he was a patient in a psych-ward or something.

Sam didn't know the first thing about answering that question. She gave a half-shrug, peered closely at Freddie. "He didn't throw up again," was the best she could do.

But the answer still seemed to relieve Gunsmoke. To Freddie's trained eye at least, the guy wasn't _so_ tense after hearing that. He nodded curtly. "Good."

"Good?" Sam asked, voicing Freddie's thoughts.

"Mary's worried," he said, finally speaking to Freddie. "Do you think you can come home? Talk to her?"

"Can she look at me?" Freddie asked. Gunsmoke actually flinched, like the question was a kill shot to his chest. Sam's hands fluttered from Freddie's elbow to his wrist, and then she laced all ten of her fingers through five of his.

"She asks that you look at this," Gunsmoke said.

Freddie looked up, noticed for the first time that he was carrying a large book with him. He presented it for Freddie to take. Freddie looked at the cover filled with blue balloons and dancing teddy bears. He swallowed. It was his baby book. He shook his head. Gunsmoke continued to hold it out.

After an awkward moment stretched to breaking point, Sam took it.

"Fred," Gunsmoke sounded like he was at a wake again. Maybe that was just how he talked when he knew whose son he was looking at. Freddie swallowed, looked at the streamlets in the gutter.

"I want to stay with Sam," he said. When the words had time to fall to the little river and be carried off down the drain, Freddie looked up at his protector. "I can't go yet."

"Well, when you can…" Gunsmoke said lowly in Spanish. Sam looked lost. Freddie nodded.

One weathered hand clapped Freddie strongly on the shoulder, rocking his young frame into Sam's. Gunsmoke didn't meet his eye as he said gruffly to the traffic, "Take care."

He crossed the street again, back toward home. He was needed there more than here. Here, Freddie had Sam.

**Review! Gibby fans say what?**


	13. Chapter 13: iKnow What It Is Now

**Chapter 13: iKnow What It Is Now**

They went back to Sam's before it got dark. He was exhausted, emotionally strained, and he wanted nothing more than to forget all of it, everything. He wished he hadn't told her. She couldn't even look at him now.

Pam was on her way out, flogging her wares in clothes that didn't really fit her. Her face changed with one look at him and Sam.

"Hey, what's the matter?"

"Nothing," Sam snapped. "We're just tired."

"Ya look like ya killed a guy or somethin'," Pam said with a smirk as she primped herself in the mirror by the front door.

Freddie didn't even have the energy to laugh it off. Pam's expression widened and she turned, rubbing lipstick off her teeth. "Ya didn't really kill a guy did ya?"

Sam groaned. "No! Just go to work already!"

"So bossy!" Pam said, still trying to get a smile out of Freddie. When it didn't work, she shrugged and left. Freddie tried to trade a look with Sam but she still wouldn't look at him.

He shouldn't have told her.

"Hungry?" she asked, and for a second her eyes did land on him. He nodded, and she looked away. "I'll find something."

Freddie went into her room and collapsed on the bed. He'd never ever felt regret this huge before. If he had only one do-over he'd go back and not tell her. He'd make something up, something less…freakish. Something more like Carly's mom running away, or his father simply having a better life far from here.

But there were no take-backs. The ugly, gritty truth was out there now. He wasn't normal anymore. That was the worst part. This entire thing had robbed him of his anonymity, his chance to be just another face in the crowd. It set him apart. He didn't want to be apart, or in any kind of spotlight—that was for Sam or Carly. He wanted to be faceless behind the camera again.

He lay with his face mashed into the blue sheets, listening to Sam root through the refrigerator, then shove stuff around on the counter, then throw things back into the ice-box. He estimated that she was nearly finished making whatever it was when the front door slammed.

Pam's laugh was nothing at all like Sam's. But then maybe it was just a fake laugh for her client, who was laughing in a way that made Freddie think of shot glasses. He lifted his face out of the bed, listened harder.

Sam's cooking noises were suddenly silent. The laughter carried on through the living room, past the kitchen. Pam started making weird promises, and then her bedroom door slammed.

Listening hard, Freddie heard footsteps. It was Sam in the hall with the snacks, but suddenly that drunken laugh came again—too close to the door. The guy was in the kitchen.

"Hey darlin' you dropped something."

"Thanks," Sam said. She could have been making small talk with a guy at a checkout counter in MallMart or something. None of her threatening venom was there. He wondered if it was in her eyes at least. He hoped it was, didn't understand why she didn't tell the guy where he could go for talking to her like that.

Then he randomly remembered Carly complaining about her brief stint working for T-Bo, how she'd had to let the customers be right and funny all the time. His stomach dropped. He felt sick.

"That looks good," the guy purred, "one of those for me?"

Freddie got to his feet, but the bedroom door opened before he could reach for it. Sam hurried into the room with a plate of hotdogs and chips, with drunken laughter only steps behind her. Freddie saw that there wasn't so much venom in Sam's eyes as fear as the man stopped the door when she tried to close it behind her, pushed it open with a leering smile.

"Hey!" Freddie barked, throwing his weight against their side of the door. It was mostly surprise that won them the struggle; the guy hadn't expected another guy to be back here.

The door closed with a loud thud just as Pam's voice called through the apartment, "Hey Don are we gonna do this or not?" there was the familiar Puckett edge in her tone at least. She must've seen where Don was.

Heavy footsteps retreated. A second later, Pam's flirt was back on and her bedroom door slammed again. Freddie was still pressing all his weight into the wood of the door. He couldn't believe he'd had to do that. Beside him Sam was breathing shallowly and shaking a little.

"Are you okay?" Freddie demanded, "Did he—"

"No," Sam answered. About half-way through the syllable, her voice regained its usual strength. She straightned up, all venom and hardness once again. "I'm fine, he was just a dirt bag and tried to take my hotdogs."

Freddie wasn't amused. There was a deadlock above his head. He had one on his door at home but it was on the outside. Freddie reached up and threw it into place. The security it presented allowed him to finally step away from the door. He shook his head. Sam Puckett was supposed to break locks not rely on them.

"That was too close."

She snorted. "Yeah, for him. I just about brained the guy."

Freddie noticed for the first time the hem of her butter sock protruding from her pocket. She must've rooted it out of the freezer when Pam returned so early. He was glad she was so well prepared but it made things stir around in his stomach and remember Gibby's pact with her. She shouldn't have to keep butter socks handy.

Still he forced a smile and a laugh, "Yeah he didn't know who he was dealing with."

"Or that you were back here," she said. Freddie's breath slowed. Was that a compliment? It sounded like one. He looked sideways at her. She wasn't taking it back either. Color faintly tinted her cheeks and then she dove suddenly onto the bed, expertly keeping most of the chips in place as she did so.

"You said you were making those for me," Freddie said.

She snorted. "No I didn't."

"You asked me if I was hungry."

"So?"

"So! Then you started making food, there's an implied promise in that!"

She huffed and rolled her eyes. "Only nubs count on _implied_ promises. If you were hungry you shoulda made your own food."

Freddie laughed. "Figures."

Sam took a bite and chewed triumphantly. Freddie didn't look away from the food until she sighed dramatically. "Fine! Take one!"

Freddie enjoyed his dinner as Sam booted up her battered laptop.

"Carly's online. She wants to vid chat about iCarly," she said.

Freddie groaned, pressing his fingers into his pounding head to massage the pressure away. "Just ignore her."

"Uh, dude, she's—" Sam started, but Freddie groaned again, and the sound turned into a whine. "Seriously, do we have to? I was hoping we could—"

"Hey," Carly interjected suddenly. "Sam, turn the camera."

Freddie opened his eyes to find that Sam had already connected with Carly before telling him she was on-line. She turned the computer like she had been ordered to do. Freddie looked at Sam like she'd betrayed him. Sam shrugged—half apologetically, half serves-you-right.

Shoulders slumping forward, Freddie moved closer to the screen.

Carly was wearing her best stern expression. "I get that you two are _in love_ and all of that," Sam snorted at the implication, and Freddie sighed. Carly crossed her arms and continued, "but seriously, you can't just ditch me and iCarly! You'll have plenty of time to yourself later, but right now, enough funny business! We got work to do if we're gonna to do a decent show in three days!"

Freddie took a really deep breath and sighed wearily, taking the computer from Sam. "Carly. I wasn't actually suggesting funny business. Me and Sam have some stuff to talk about."

"Well can't you talk about it later?" she smirked. "We just need to bat around a few ideas."

"No. We can't _talk about it later_," Freddie sneered hatefully. He instantly felt bad—and that was the last thing he needed, on top of all this chiz. He gritted his teeth. "This is a little more important than iCarly."

Carly laughed. "What's more important than iCarly?"

She'd meant it as a joke—her natural defense system was to keep things light and humorous—but the sound just rubbed Freddie the wrong way. Something snapped.

"Geezus," he practically shouted. "Listen to you! It's just a stupid show! Who cares?"

Carly's expression was hurt. Dammit.

"A stupid show?" she asked. Her voice was slightly higher than usual. She was about to cry.

"Dude?" Sam asked, all question marks and breath. She looked as hurt as Carly did on the screen. Double dammit.

"Is that what you really think Freddie?" Carly asked tightly. "You get a girlfriend and all of the sudden iCarly's stupid?"

That wasn't it at all, but he was too tired to explain. Nostril's flaring, he let his annoyance do all the talking, since it was bubbling closer to the surface than all that hard respectful stuff he really needed to say to his friend.

"Honestly? Right now? Yes. I'm sorry Carly, I don't expect you to understand, but seriously. I. Do. Not. Care. About iCarly anymore."

He shoved the laptop off his knees back toward Sam and stood. He didn't want to see the look he knew would be on Sam's face. He didn't want to stick around to be punished either. He unlocked the door and jerked it open. The rest of the apartment was dark and quiet. That dirt bag Don was still busy in Pam's room—he could hear weird sounds that kept him from collapsing on the couch. He marched through the living room and left the apartment.

He didn't know where he was going to go. He wasn't ready to go home. He couldn't stay here. Now he wasn't welcome at Carly's either. Eyes stinging, he slumped against the wall in the hall outside the Puckett apartment.

He was sorry he'd treated Carly like that, but was it too much to ask to have a little time to talk to Sam about everything he'd just told her? She hadn't said a single word about it. He needed to know what she was thinking. He needed to know if it was as bad as he was afraid it was.

She'd looked scared when he was talking—something close to that look in her eyes when she'd ran back in the room with her buttersock. His gut twisted at the thought that he'd scared her like that.

_He_ had. The him that he was now that they knew where he came from; now that he wasn't just Freddie Benson, but the son of a psychopath, a murderer, a rapist. And Freddie could tell just by the memory of those words burning out of his throat that he'd probably looked pretty murderous while talking about the man.

He dropped his head into his hands. What was he going to do?

Apologize, obviously, but not right now. He just couldn't, it was a pride thing. Maybe even a boundaries thing. He wasn't going to let Carly control his love life like she controlled everything else just because she was the star of the show. If he wanted a night off, or a few, then he should get it.

A noise of disgust crawled out of his throat as he detected his thoughts. Maybe Carly was right. If he and Sam weren't together right now then he could have gladly put his troubles aside for the show. But only because the show used to be his greatest distraction.

Before Sam, Freddie had found comfort in technology and the hobbies it offered. Marissa could be insane all she wanted, but she couldn't stop him from having fun with his friends, from doing a web show that his father, wherever he was, might be watching.

What a joke that had been. No one important was watching, so what was the point? He had a girlfriend that was a better distraction than tech stuff, so why not just drop all the silliness?

His anger felt righteous, so he sat with it out in the hall for the next two hours.

…

Sam had texted him when Carly signed off. Instead of replying, he tried to return to the room. Finding the door locked again, he had to knock, ask if he could come back in. She let him in with a dead-pan stony expression.

"I'm sorry I was such a jerk," he said.

She nodded, wouldn't really look at him. Didn't really looked at him as they half-heartedly decided to watch a movie, picked an old classic, and settled in to watch it.

They were watching a Sylvester Stallone movie. Freddie was on the bed. Sam had casually stretched out on the carpet in the middle of the room. She was laughing and making fun of the storyline like nothing was wrong. He was trying not to worry about why she didn't want to cuddle up to him on the bed. He was starting to feel like she wanted nothing to do with him anymore.

He shouldn't have told her. He shouldn't have been so mean to Carly.

Without jokes and laughs or kisses and touches to distract him, he was on the edge, nearly tipping into all that rage that had so scared him on that bus bench, or into all the millions of insecurities born every time Sam had avoided his gaze since then. He shouldn't have told her. She'd be his right now if he hadn't.

Sam's occasional laugh at the movie or offer of some popcorn shook him out of it for a moment.

Whatever, he tried telling himself in this moments, Sam's just not the snuggling type, and anyway she was probably not in the mood after being chased down the hall by some drunken creep. The memory of that pissed him off, made him absolutely sure that was why she wasn't naked with him right now, helping him forget how much the world sucked. Of course that was why. He couldn't blame her.

He hated that his fingers twitched to touch her anyway. His eyes constantly darted to the window, where it was dark out, then to the clock, where it was closing in on midnight. Eventually, they'd have to go to sleep. He drew in a slow breath, and reminded himself that he could hold her soon, get lost in her in the dark. He just needed to be a man until then, and deal with it on his own.

At the sound of a single sharp rap on her door, Sam got to her feet and threw the lock. She opened the door just enough to look at her mother. Freddie heard Pam inform her that she was finished for the night, and that she was sorry about the guy, what did he—Sam batted it all away shrugged, said, "Okay, whatever."

Then Pam was gone. Sam shut the door, turned around. She stood with her hands shoved in her back pockets. While helicopters blew up on the screen, Freddie was trying not to ask it, the question that was making his hands shake, threatening to leap out of his throat. _Will you be with me, now_?

She took a step closer to the bed and for a moment, with his breath whooshing out and his heart leaping toward the ceiling, Freddie was sure he wouldn't have to ask. She was going to be his distraction now. She must know how badly he needed it, now that she knew all the ugly details of what he was struggling with.

But then she was just scooping up some clothes out of the floor.

"I'm going to take a shower," she said. He gulped, trying not to feel the pain of rejection, trying not to believe it _was_ rejection. He nodded.

…

Sam was fresh out of the shower, smiling shyly.

"You're beautiful,"

Her hair hung flat and damp to her elbows. She wore an oversized t-shirt and boy shorts. Somehow, it was even sexier than the silky girly stuff she'd worn for him the night before. Freddie was already out of his day clothes and stretched out on her bed, exhausted and tense from all of the emotional strain of the day.

She set the door against its frame, flipped off the light switch, throwing the whole room into darkness, then flopped down on the mattress beside him and wiggled under the blankets, next to him, against him. Finally.

Freddie wrapped his arms around her and the curves of his body fit right up against hers. Perfect. He drew in a deep breath of her damp hair, smelled flowers mingling with the natural scent of Sam and a deep moan of approval oozed out of him, "What is that?"

"Lilacs," Sam said. "You like?"

He drew in another deep breath of her. "Yes."

"Carly got it for me a while ago. I never cared to use it but…" he felt her shrug, and she laughed, "You make me want to smell _girly_." She scoffed, "How jank is that?"

"It's not jank, it's sweet." Freddie murmured in her ear. Oh, yes, this was just what he needed, sweet nothings and intoxicating Sam. He held her tighter and used his lips to push away lilac scented hair until they found the soft skin of her neck.

As he did so, she sighed, "There you go, calling me sweet again."

"You are," Freddie said through a smile, "_and_ you're beautiful."

She rolled to face him. In the dark, he couldn't see her, but he could feel her breath on his face, minty with toothpaste, and her breasts against his chest, soft and braless under the fabric of her shirt. "You already said that." She said.

"I did?"

"Yeah," she said as he enjoyed the warmth of her skin through her shirt, "you said it when I came in."

"Hm," he said, pulling up her shirt, "didn't realize I was talking out loud."

She scoffed, pulled away from him.

"What?" he asked with a laugh, reaching across the abyss that'd come between them on the mattress. He couldn't feel her anymore. He wanted to feel her. When his hand found hers, she knocked it away.

"I'm not tired. I'm going to watch TV in the living room."

"Sam, what's up?" he went up to an elbow as he felt her get out of the bed.

"Quit calling me sweet and beautiful all the time, okay?" She said from where she stood in the middle of the dark room.

"But you are." He said dumbly.

"I know," she breathed, "I mean, I know you think so…" she sniffed wetly and Freddie stood quickly, tripped over the tangle of blankets, found her in the dark.

"Sam," he said and she pulled away from him, opened the door. There was a nightlight in the kitchen; the light pooled into the room, showed him her silhouette. She was shaking her head,

"Quit being a _nub_." She wasn't teasing, she was serious. Her tone cut through the dark savagely. "You know I've been with you _every_ night since Friday?" she shoved him, "Learn some self-control or something, would ya?"

Freddie's heart dropped into his stomach, which slammed down to the floor leaving a hole like a cartoon canon ball. He recalled predicting that this would happen, in his kitchen, that she would realize she didn't like being whatever kind of girlfriend she'd become, would blame it all on him. He hadn't predicted it would actually all be his fault.

Still, he found himself asking, "Where is this coming from?" His chest hurt and, unable to stop himself, he went towards her dark shape in the doorway, breathing, "Sam…"

"Stop it," she said, backing away from him into the hallway. "Take a hint."

"Wait,"

"No," she said, "Seriously. I want to be away from you for a little bit."

That hurt. He literally took a step back as if the words had been just another one of her punches. She shut the door behind her, using the force necessary to close it all the way.

Freddie stood in the dark for a moment, staring after her.

…What?

…

It was two in the morning. Freddie was still awake, staring into the darkness. He'd been turning it all over in his head for hours. After years of friendship she liked him enough to sleep with him, to let him do all kinds of new and exciting things to her, to lay whispering and laughing in his arms every night since then… but then he told her all the details about his dad and now suddenly she was sleeping on the couch.

_You know I've been with you _every_ night since Friday_?

Yes, he had known. He'd thanked God for it; there was no way he'd have been able to sleep these last two days if he hadn't had her to hold onto. But now… _Learn some self-control_! Did she think he was like his dad?

He wasn't, but maybe he was headed that way. He remembered losing it, handling her roughly in the street. He recalled actively _choosing_ to manipulate his mother while she was most vulnerable and all for his personal gain... His stomach rolled. No, no, no, he wasn't his father.

Sam was just overwhelmed, clearly. Yeah, that was it. She wouldn't think that about him… would she? _No_. She wouldn't. She knew him better than anyone else…Or did she? No—yeah, she did. She was just overwhelmed. (He'd be lying if he said he wasn't a _little_ bit overwhelmed himself.)

Hate and hurt burned in his chest. Not for her, but for his father, who was still ruining lives from the grave. Because of _him_, Freddie couldn't go home, give Sam the space she needed. (That he hoped she needed, because otherwise—he didn't want to think about otherwise).

Hot angry tears leaked from his eyes and rolled into his hair. He considered going home anyway, but even in the light of what his constant presence was doing to Sam, he still couldn't face his mother right now.

Selma Hayak screaming, pleading, bleeding—his mother living that over and over in that man's house—

_Sometimes you make it impossible to forget the things he did to me_.

He loved his mother, despite her overbearing nature and it hurt to know that sometimes when she looked at him, she didn't see him at all, but someone she wanted to forget. Someone she hated.

_You're unclean_.

Monsters truly existed in the world, a cruel enough reality to meet, never mind the shredded illusions of the man who'd fathered him being a hero. Never mind the death of the childish notion that even if his parents weren't in love _anymore_, they _had_ to have been in love when they made him.

The man had taken seven wives. Seven. Marissa had been his youngest, seventeen to his forty-something. Seventeen. Freddie was seventeen, Sam and Carly and Wendy and all the girls he'd gone to school with since kindergarten were seventeen. Innocent. Still holding onto pieces of their childhood. She'd been just seventeen and he'd been forty.

The man had truly believed he was more special than anyone else, some kind of prophet, _holy_. He'd had people bowing to him, praying to him. He called himself divine and all the while, he killed anyone who defied him. Even if they were children…

_Disobedience must be punished_.

That man was his father.

That wasn't okay.

That could _never_ be okay.

Freddie's face broke, crumpled itself up, a sudden rush of hot tears poured into his hair and he swallowed a sob. He was alone. That was the thing. There was no man out there who looked like an older version of Freddie who had things figured out and who maybe sometimes thought of him and sent him best wishes.

There was no hope of maybe finding this man someday, starting a relationship with him. Freddie was _never_ going to get to talk to him about love, get an opinion from him about what it was. And if he did find love, his children would never _ever_ know grandpa on daddy's side.

Freddie wiped his eyes on the sheets, swore at himself to stop crying.

His hands shook with nothing to hold. He was alone. In the dark. Not the darkness of having no light, but the darkness of having no happiness. For the first time since running from her in their kitchen, Freddie wanted to see his mother, just so he could hug her. She used to hug him when he was little and scared of stupid kiddie things. She'd hug him tight and talk about happy things until he felt better.

He needed a hug like that right now. He needed to talk about other things. He needed someone; he couldn't do this alone.

He needed someone, _anyone_ really, but he didn't want just anyone. He wanted _Sam_. No one else could understand the disappointments of life like she could, with a mother like Pam. No one else was stronger than she was, and he wanted to hold onto that strength so that maybe some would come off on him.

He wanted _Sam_. Even if she just sat there with her hand on his. He just wanted her near.

The door opened, then, loud as it scrapped out of its frame and dragged over the carpet of the room. He sat up. Sam's silhouette stood there for a moment. "Freddie?" she whispered.

"Sam," he answered, hating that it sounded wet, giving away the tears the dark had been hiding. Next thing, she was in the room, sinking to the mattress, straddling him, wrapping her arms around him. Hugging him. Holding him. God, she felt good.

"I'm sorry!" she breathed against his shoulder. She was shaking. He could do nothing but hold her. "I'm sorry I freaked out. It's not because of the stuff you told me about your dad," she said, stabbing right to the heart of his insecurities, soothing them with her reassurance. She really _did_ know him that well. It _wasn't_ in his imagination. A whine escaped him as he admitted, "Really? I thought…I mean you wouldn't look at me and-"his voice broke.

"No, it's not that." She whispered, "Honestly, I don't care who you're dad is. You're still you. I just—I didn't know what to do to help you."

"Just be with me." Freddie rasped into the safe and lilac scented haven of her neck. "Help me forget. I was better off not knowing."

"Maybe," she said. She wasn't whispering anymore. Freddie couldn't help but smile. He loved that she didn't let the dark conquer over her voice. She combed her fingers through his hair, her nails raking lightly over his scalp. "But you can't forget it."

Freddie laughed, despite himself, "You're lucky, Sam. You're mom's unconventional, but at least she's not crazy. And your dad's normal, cool even." Something occurred to him and he made a strangled noise. He'd remembered one of the prompt questions for the genealogy project. _Are there any strong and/or interesting hereditary traits in your family_?

"Insanity runs in my family," he said thickly, "on _both_ sides."

Sam pulled away, took his chin and held her face close to his in the dark. "Hey, you're dad was a whacko to his core, but you're mom wasn't born that way. Someone _drove her_ insane. There's a difference."

His lip trembled and she kissed it. "You have the best parts of your mom in you."

"Yeah, like what?"

She smoothed her hands across his chest and hung her head so that Freddie's lips touched the part in her hair.

"She's a survivor for one thing—and she's smart. She got herself out of the mess she got into. My mom never will." She sighed. "Man, do we have screwed up parents, or what?"

"Except for your dad," he said, threading his fingers through her hair.

"Yeah," and she sniffed into the dark. "He's pretty great."

"Let's just run away and live with him." Freddie laughed.

"Great, I'll pack my bag." Sam snorted. There was a moment when they just held each other.

"I'm sorry I freaked out on you," she said.

"I get it, you needed space—" She put her forehead on his, stroked his face gently and shushed him softly.

"No." she choked with tears of her own, not allowed to fall. Just like that, her guard was down. This was the Sam behind the walls, the Sam he wanted. Then she was whispering, "Freddie, the way you make me feel so special is... _scary_. I've never had anything so good as you, you know? I mean, I had this really expensive little jewelry box from my J'MamMaw once, but I stepped on it and it broke all to pieces and, I don't know, I was afraid you were going to be the next box, or something." She scoffed, "Does that make sense?"

Sam was using metaphor. _Correctly_. Suddenly nothing in the world at all mattered but her. Any recent knowledge about his father and whatever broken pieces it left in its wake were swept away. Any spaces left empty inside were filled. It was mind wiping and soul affirming; one thing, a concept, a feeling, a state of being, a _person_, a person that was his.

Sam.

If this was what she was feeling, he didn't blame her for running, for putting her guard up, for moving to the couch, for blaming him. It was daunting. It was wonderful. It was terrifying. It was _good_, so good it hurt. They were young, teenagers. This didn't happen to teenagers. Did it? Or maybe it did. Maybe that was the part of the world that balanced the monsters.

She'd mentioned breaking a box, called him the next box. He got it. She was worried she sounded crazy, but she didn't, it made sense. It made all the sense in the world because she could easily trample him and destroy him. She almost had, choosing the couch over him. With his forehead on hers, Freddie nodded, didn't trust himself to speak—too much stuff inside—but he had to try. _He had to try_.

"Sam," he started. She kissed him deeply. Mint toothpaste, lilac, muscled-parts and soft-parts, this was his friend Sam blurring the lines between real and too wonderful.

It was hurting, physically hurting, in two places. In his chest, where he kept everything about her that he was unconsciously thinking of as _his_ (it all burned so _good_ in there) and in his groin, where he ached for her body in hot throbs. He wanted to connect with her, to disappear into her even more than he already had.

He wanted her to _know_.

"Sam," he began again with the breath he'd just pulled out of her, "Sam, I love you."

Her answer was a little crying noise, a surrendering noise and a nod he felt with her lips on his. Then—finally—as boy shorts were gone and she sank onto him, giving him the connection he longed for, the part of her that was only his, she broke her lips from his to gasp, "I'll always love you, Freddie. _Always_."

…

**Okay if you ship Seddie hardcore, you are basically required by the laws of the universe to comment on this chapter. Just sayin'.**


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14: iThink I'm Okay**

On Wednesday morning, Freddie woke with Sam all over him. She held him tight, even in her sleep, like she had to make sure he didn't get away. He could feel her breaths, light and tickling over his chest. He smelled lilacs and her hair tickled his nose every time he pulled in breath. He opened his eyes. Her room was filled with light and it hurt.

Man, he was tired. He felt like he'd run a marathon or something. He blinked heavy lids, shifting through the groggy haze in his mind… _Always_. The memory of being with Sam came back first, vivid memories of her strained voice in his ear, saying it again and again, _I love you_… _I love you… oh god, I love you._

How could he have ever been unsure what love was?

Pam's voice in the kitchen drew his attention. The door to Sam's room was wide open. He could see the counter… and someone sitting at it. It wasn't Pam. He was young, in his mid-twenties, Hispanic. He sat with a can of soda forgotten halfway to his lips and he was staring right at the tangle of bare Sam-and-Freddie skin on her mattress with wide eyes and a dropped jaw.

Freddie kicked the door closed.

The movement jarred Sam awake. She snorted, sat up. Freddie found a pool of her slobber on his chest. She looked around, pushed flying-away-hair out of her face and blinked slowly, then finally looked down at him. She smiled, eyes dropping back all the way closed, "Morning." Though sitting up, it was entirely possible that she'd gone right back to sleep.

"Someone's here," Freddie said through a yawn so big it cracked his jaw. The clock said it was nearly eight in the morning. It had to have been nearly four before they'd fallen asleep. Four hours of sleep.

He was sorely tempted to pull the sheets back over his head and go back to sleep, but he was distracted by that guy who'd been staring. Freddie distantly registered that he was supposed to be offended that someone else had been staring at his naked girlfriend… but he couldn't conjure it up. Maybe it was because he was so tired, or maybe probably because Freddie had been just as naked, just as much a victim to the guy's stares.

His kick had only propelled the door across the carpet, hadn't been enough to squeeze it into its frame. Through the crack drifted Pam's voice, still loudly and harshly going on and on about something.

"Hm?" Sam asked.

"Someone's here," he repeated thickly. She caught his yawn and stretched by arching her back and throwing her arms out. She was completely topless and her skin looked golden in the morning light filtering through her blinds, "Who?"

"Dunno,"

…

Sam pulled on her shorts and yanked on her t-shirt. She was out the door with her hair still in the collar of her shirt. Freddie _just_ got his boxer briefs on as the door opened to show the stranger at the counter once more. She headed down the hall and Freddie followed. The young man was giving them a shy and amused look.

"Sup, Julio?" she asked.

"Good morning, sunflower," the visitor said in a heavy Spanish accent. "Looks like you slept well."

"Bite me." Sam scoffed.

Satisfied now, knowing the the guy was a friend, Freddie headed for the fridge and the OJ in there. The young man laughed, said in Spanish over his shoulder into the living room, where Freddie was surprised to see three other guys, "_I would, but perhaps this guy already has_?"

Freddie paused with his hand on the fridge door, answered in Spanish, "_She was the one doing the biting_."

Julio whirled around, showing the proper amount of surprise to find a fluent speaker of Freddie's age and skin-tone. Julio laughed outright, cried in English, "Where did you get this guy, Sam?"

Freddie smiled. Julio leaned forward, extended a fist, "Hey, man, I'm Julio!"

"Freddie," Freddie said, offering his fist for Julio to knock his against.

Pam emerged from her room, fully dressed for the day and rubbing lotion into her hands, "Oh, you're up. See you guys have met."

"Julio's my kind-of-foster brother," Sam explained as Freddie drank straight from the carton. He was _loving_ that the Puckett place had no rules.

"He lived in the apartment across the hall." Sam continued. "Mom kind of looked out for him and his brothers when they were littler," she nodded to the other guys in the living room.

Freddie gave them a wave, which they returned.

"He's a good guy," Pam said, giving Julio a pop in the back of the head, adding to Sam sharply, "I let him hang around still because he has good manners and I want them to rub off on you."

Freddie pulled the carton from his lips, with a wet smack and a loud swallow, "Thought that's what I was here for?"

Sam and Pam laughed. Sam's arms snaked around Freddie's bare torso, and she hugged him from behind. Freddie experienced one of those moments when he saw his life from the outside. He didn't recognize what he saw—a young man in his underwear in front of visitors, a girl putting her hands all over him in front of her mother, drinking out of the carton eight minutes before first period started.

Yeah, he wasn't going to school today either.

Pam had drawn the same conclusion and was now discussing it with Sam, who'd released Freddie to root around in the fridge.

"What time is it? Aren't you kids gonna be late for class?"

Freddie shrugged rather sheepishly and Sam shook her head.

"Goin' today?" Pam asked.

"Nah," Sam said like her mother had asked if she wanted gum or something.

"Oh yeah, what'r'ya doin' that's so important?"

Sam shrugged, looked at her almost-foster-brother. "Helpin' Julio?"

Julio perked up and shrugged at Pam. "You know we can always use the extra hands."

Pam rolled her eyes. Freddie reappraised the man, trying to deduce what he needed help doing. Not that Freddie was up for school, but he didn't think it was a good idea to go law breaking again.

Sam faced her mother with her shoulders set stubbornly. "I'm not making you work extra hard to pay for my dentist appointment. And I'll go to school tomorrow. Swear."

Freddie tried not to witness too much of the soft thing that passed between mother and daughter. He knew both of them would appreciate not being the center of attention right now. It was over with a snort of surrender from Pam. "Then be careful with that nail-gun for Pete's sake. We don't need a repeat of what happened last time."

Freddie was the only one that didn't laugh. In the living room, the young man in the middle of the sofa extended a hand to show off a scar. Freddie gulped, looked at his girlfriend. "Why'd'you need a nail gun?"

Sam snorted. "To nail things, Dummy."

"Julio builds houses, does pretty good for himself." Pam said proudly.

"Okay, Sunflower, we will head over there now. You and your guy come join us. It's at 52 West Scheinder's Street."

"Cool-i-o. See you later."

The construction team filed out of the house with waves and shouts and blown kisses. Once it was quiet again, Pam took a deep breath. "I have go deal with her."

Sam swelled a little, looked down at the frozen box of waffles in her hands. "Tell her I said hey and stuff."

Pam nodded on her way out the door. After a minute of scratching at the layer of frost on the box, Sam looked shyly up at him. He took the box and pulled out his share of waffles. "Who's her?"

Sam drew a breath in through her lips. "J'Mamaw. She lives in the raisin ranch downtown."

"Deal with her?"

"She's got Alls-timers or something."

"Alzheimer's."

"Doesn't know who we are anymore."

Freddie nodded, remembered the story of the expensive little jewelry box. Stuff crashed around inside of him. It literally felt like it required core muscle to keep from getting thrown left and right by the weight of it all. And he used to think butterflies were a big deal.

He wanted her to know again, but it was different in the light. Out here, she had her guard up. It was nothing he'd done. This wasn't her usual Fort Knox—that only came around if she was hurt or angry. Right now, she was neither of those things. She was…

With a world shifting thought, Freddie realized that this was the girly Sam he'd been getting to know, which still wasn't the inner-most Sam he'd seen last night. She had walls like an onion had layers. Last night, she'd stripped them all away for him, finally let him see who she really was in the dark.

Now here in the light of day, she'd put up some walls like she'd thrown on some clothes, but they weren't bad walls. They were the walls anyone had. The kind of walls a person needed to walk around without collapsing like a house of cards.

Freddie laughed a little, wondered if to her it felt like he'd put up the same walls too. Judging by the way she kept glancing at him when she thought he wasn't looking, it probably did. With an inner sigh of relief, Freddie finally experienced that thing he'd always expected to feel—the morning after.

He walked toward Sam until she was pinned between him and the counter, then he reached around her. She giggled as he enclosed her in his arms and then laughed when all her did was put their waffles in the toaster behind her and push the lever down.

She leaned into him comfortably, and he woke up a little more as her arms tightened around him in another hug like the one he'd woken up in. Her hair still smelled faintly of lilac, but now mostly just her. Time could have stopped, but then the toaster coughed up breakfast.

Sam let go, turned eagerly, whooped loudly.

"Cookie waffles Babeh!"

Freddie laughed as she delicately plucked the chocolate-chip waffles from the toaster to her plate and sucked burning fingers. He waited until she'd doused them properly in syrup, then stole the plate.

"Thanks."

"Hey!"

"They're mine," he said

"I fixed them!"

"I cooked them!"

"So? More work went into fixing them."

"Yeah right."

For several minutes, it was keep away. Freddie felt a bit like a circus performer, showing off the amazing feat of keeping breakfast on the plate and away from a Hungry Sam at the same time. Then she got the plate back and suddenly it was basketball, he was defense, and the object of the game was to get the plate back before all the food was devoured.

Like every game of basketball Freddie had ever attempted, he lost.

Sam licked maple-syrup from her fingers happily, leaving the sticky plate on the counter. "Mama's full."

Freddie laughed, reached for the melting box of waffles. "Yeah, well, Daddy's still hungry."

There was a beat—a half pause as they both wondered where that nickname came from and if it was weird or not—then Sam laughed and shook her head. Freddie wasn't embarrassed. If she was mama then he was naturally the other half. He shoved more waffles into the toaster, feeling suddenly so happy and…_complete_ that he felt like he could very well split and become twins or something. He laughed again. How perfect would that be? Then Mel would have someone to love.

"Okay—" Sam started, Freddie thought for a second she was going to call him Daddy. Then he saw it on her face, she couldn't do it. He laughed. Good, that would've been too weird, but she continued with a smile that said she liked the idea of him calling himself that anyway. "Eat fast, Julio needs us."

She disappeared down the hallway.

"Do you help him often?" Freddie called after her.

"What?"

He raised his voice. "Do you work with Julio often?"

"Yeah, whenever I can help mom out."

Freddie watched the coils heat up red inside the toaster, shaking his head and drumming his fingers. "I cannot believe that while everyone at school thought she was sleeping in or vandalizing public property Sam Puckett was actually hanging drywall."

She was back, dressed, and so close all he could see was her proud smile. "Well, I'm full of surprises I guess," she whispered.

"Oh, I know it," he purred, leaving his waffles to cool so he could warm her up a little bit with some kisses. He could have did a lot more, but he remembered her moving to the couch for some space and decided to control himself—to miss her for a little longer if that was what she wanted.

After a few more kisses, she made up her mind. She would make some money today, and since she wasn't her mother, that meant the kissing was over. He sandwiched his waffles over a slab of butter and syrup and ate it all in four bites on his way back into the bedroom for his clothes.

To his surprise, they were neatly laundered and stuffed into a basket with all of Sam's clothes. After a moment of confusion, Freddie pieced it all together. Pam had done the laundry at some point, which explained the open bedroom door. He returned to the kitchen.

"You know you make her sound a lot worse than she actually is."

"Who?"

"Pam. She drives you to the dentist, she takes in orphans, she does the laundry and she visits her mother in an old folk's home. She's not bad—a reckless person in general, but not bad. I mean, she just works nights, you know?"

"I know," Sam took in a deep breath and released it. "She has her days. But then she has her _days_."

"Kinda like my mom," Freddie said. Sam's fingers brushed through his hair. He wanted to look into her eyes, but she was looking at his jaw like she was seeing a UFO. Warm fingers stroked his face. "You're getting a beard."

With a jerk of an eyebrow, Freddie realized how long it'd been since he'd shaved. Or bathed for that matter. It was a wonder he didn't smell to high heavens. Then again, he'd never gone more than twelve hours without taking a shower in his life, so he didn't know how long it took for him to reek.

"I need a shower."

"The thing's broken so you gotta hold it."

"What?"

Sam followed him into the little bathroom and showed him the trick to the Puckett shower. The switch on the faucet wouldn't stay up itself, had to be held to keep the water coming out of the shower head. Her entire life was one little thing on top of the other, and the more he lived it with her, the more enchanted he was with the idea of Sam.

Not that broken shower heads were the stuff of nightmares, but Freddie was accustomed enough to proficiency that things around here, like having no bedframe, or glass to drink OJ out of, or proper way to bathe, or close a bedroom door, were jarring enough, never-mind the real stuff, like what Pam did, or what disease she had, or what it had to be like at home for a girl to make a pact with a random boy at school about Pay Back to the Uninvited.

Once clean but still hairy—Sam asked him to leave the scruff—he hailed a cab so they wouldn't have to walk. After only four hours of sleep, he was, weirdly enough, not tired. Getting up had been hell, but now that he was awake he felt fine. Still, it was best to preserve energy where they could, and Freddie predicted little opportunity to rest once they reached the construction site.

…

"Hey, Sam, haven't seen you in a while!"

A lot people on the site knew her, and greeted her happily, a few tipped their hard hats, gave Freddie a friendly smile, but didn't ask questions. Those who did got a casual shrug from her, "This is Freddie, my boyfriend."

_My boyfriend_.

It struck Freddie that he'd never heard her call him that—after all their nights together, after _last night_ and he'd never heard it. Typical Sam, putting it all out of order, but making it feel perfectly right.

She was sexy in protection goggles and a hard hat, looked at home perched on the bare rafters of a roof-in-progress, swinging a hammer. Freddie tried to focus on the jobs given to him, didn't want to be the idiot who just stood there staring at the pretty girl. In an attempt to prove that he really was capable of self-control, he wandered as far from her as he could, ended up listening as some guys discussed square footage.

He caught the mistake in the math, corrected it. The others used a calculator to check the correction he'd done in his head, found it right, and exploded with praises of surprise. Julio, who was the boss on the site, gripped his shoulder, said, "Is there anything Sam's guy can't do? Look at you!"

Freddie shrugged humbly, saw Sam watching with a smile and lost that humility.

Still he wasn't going to crowd her, fought the urge to saunter over there like an idiot for a kiss or something. He pretended he was too busy to do anything but shoot her a wink.

He actually was pretty busy. Unlike with his responsibility for iCarly, he couldn't make executive decisions or half-ass something and fix it later. This was someone's house, their roof, mistakes cost money so he had to do it perfectly the first time, and double check everything with Julio. He measured and marked and handed the cut pieces up the ladder. He listened to baseball stats and dirty jokes—understood the dirty jokes now, at least—and felt good.

This could be the rest of his life. Life with Sam. Fun and hard work interwoven.

His thoughts swept over the last week of his life. Had it only been a week? Tomorrow was Thursday. Last Thursday he'd been a just a boy worried about making a B on a school project, last Thursday he'd been single and confused about his friend who kissed him once and smacked him every day, last Thursday he'd been fatherless and okay with that…

Now he was skipping school, first to vandalize something, now to build a house, now he loved Sam more than he was ever going to understand and he was her boyfriend, and now he knew who his father had been…and he was okay. Or he would be okay. He knew that now.

His arms began to burn in places his usual weight-lifting didn't flex, his back too, and his legs. It made him feel like a man, and with stains darkening his shirt collar and pits he knew he reeked by lunchtime.

Julio's truck horn blasted three times and the smooth machine that was their teamwork broke with happy cries as everyone dispersed for food. The loud scream of the saw stopped. Freddie retracted his measuring tape and dropped the flat pencil to the table. Then Sam was there, sun-kissed and sweating and in his reach. She'd discarded her hardhat and goggles somewhere.

He was holding her before he knew it. "Hi," he said. He sounded tired. He was, and hungry—he'd fallen into some weird groove, hadn't noticed time passed at all, couldn't believe it'd been hours since he'd talked to her.

She laughed, gave him a squeeze and let go before his sweatiness seeped in too much. "Let's go eat."

His stomach growled. "Oh, yes please!"

"Ya know, ya looked pretty sexy down here, doin' the math," Sam said, leading him by the hand through the maze of skeleton walls. A tremble of satisfaction went down his spine. "Yeah?"

She turned, took a couple of steps backwards to admit, "Oh yeah."

He stopped her, pulled her close but didn't kiss her—in some ways that was even better, seeing her realize he was in control of himself. He ran his fingers up her arms and then just hugged her. After a beat, she hugged back.

"Thank you," he said into her hair. He swallowed something that could have turned into tears if he let it. He didn't, it made him shiver, but he was still a man. She squeezed him.

"Always," she said softly, their secret. He lost his breath a little, released her, still wouldn't let himself kiss her.

She reached up, removed his goggles. He started to object—there was still a lot of sawdust floating around—but then she was smiling in a way that stole his voice.

He ended up just gulping, and then laughing lightly. She kissed him, laughed too, and shoved him.

He stumbled back a step, took her with him, and nearly killed himself on a stray board that leapt from under the edge of his foot, slapped his calf. He steadied himself before they fell. She rested her forehead on his chin, laughing, and he kissed the part in her hair.

He groaned. If he couldn't _really_ kiss her or hold her there was only one way to let her know.

"I love you, Sam."

She looked up like it was a gunshot, looked around like cops might have heard. Then she blushed, bit her lip, glanced shyly at him as she bounced onto her toes. "Back atcha, Benson."

That wasn't enough. He wanted to _see _her say it, in the light. The disappointment must have shown on his face because guilt jarred her features and she looked down. After a moment she looked back up at him, smiling and rolling her eyes because she knew he was waiting to hear it.

She glanced around and said quickly under her breath, "I love ya, too, Freddie, okay?" She blushed fiercely and laughed. Beautiful. He laughed, too, accepting it as the best he'd get and sighed.

Julio gave them a ride to lunch. On the way, Freddie texted Carly.

_OK enough slacking off! We gotta a show to do in two days!_

_Does this mean you suddenly care now?_

_I didn't mean that. I'm sorry. I was just mad at someone else._

_Dad stuff?_

_Yeah, I'll tell you about it sometime…_ He'd only tell the facts. Mom left dad before I was born. He'd dead now. The end.

_Just glad you're ok now _

_Me too_

_Studio after school?_

_See you then_

The team converged on a _50's One More Time_, the cheapest menu in Seattle. The sight of the popular franchise restaurant reminded Freddie of his mother's story, how she'd met Gunsmoke. He'd been waiting inside like some kind of spy, had people call him by the title of the book he carried.

With the brunt of the shock behind him now, Freddie could appreciate detail like that, and suddenly wanted to read that book—and know the man's real name. Freddie had always known Gunsmoke wasn't a real name, but since even Marissa called him that, he'd never thought to question it…

Inside the diner, the booths filled with dusty, sweating workers and the waitresses started running around, laughing flirtatiously, and using first names. This was a regular thing.

Sam and Freddie sat at a small table near the jukebox, which was playing some oldies hit that Freddie recognized from television. It was air-conditioned and had the mouth-watering smell of onion rings in the air.

Sam picked a table and slung her backpack off her shoulder into the chair. Ripping open the zipper, she plunged her hand inside, grinning wickedly. "Look what I got!"

She pulled something large out. Freddie sighed at the sight of his baby book and he sank into his chair.

"What are you doing with that?" He'd forgotten Gunsmoke had handed it to her.

"Light reading," she said with a shrug and a smirk. She dropped the book on its spine and it fell open a quarter of the way. She looked down at glossy pictures and taped in curls of hair.

"Awe, look at the itty bitty Freddie butt!"

Freddie rolled his eyes and dragged the book across the table, closing it before any of the guys saw it. It would ruin the coolest reputation he'd ever had. Sam laughed and reached for it. "Come on, he said she wanted you to look at it for some reason."

For the first time, intrigue tugged at his resolve to ignore the book.

Sam leveled blue eyes on him, reminding him that she was acting on orders from the soldier. "Dude, it's time."

She was right. Freddie looked down at the blue balloons and teddy bears dancing on the cover.

It was bigger than a dictionary and he'd never actually looked at it all the way through before. It had too many embarrassing baby pictures, too much proof of how crazy-obsessive his mother was over him with entire pages devoted to the first time he ate peas, the first time he heard Mozart, his first tick bath, etc.

With a sigh, he opened the cover.

He was more interested in looking at photos so he skipped over the section labeled Firsts (a good chunk of the book) and as he did so, something fell out—ew, a tooth. He picked it up and went in search of where it'd come from. That was when he found it.

It was a drawing done in crayon of two people, a little boy and a big man with a purple knife. The page was labeled First Written Words. With a jolt, he realized this was it. This was the _me and Gunsmoke_ picture! But something was wrong—not wrong, unexpected. Across the bottom of it in a child's hand were the words, in all capitals,

THIS IS ME AND CLAYTON.

_Clayton_?

He stared at the picture. This is me and Clayton. Gunsmoke had spelled the words out, had _intentionally_ given his real name to a little boy who looked up to him enough to draw a picture of him.

Freddie was smiling and the picture blurred. _Call me Clayton_, the gesture said, like they were family or something. Suddenly it occurred to him that he'd asked for a story about his father and had gotten a story more about Gunsmoke than anyone else.

The man wasn't related by blood at all, but he'd watched over Freddie for the first six years... and now he came whenever Marissa called (sure, that was only about four short visits in eleven years) but he came—and he'd always spoken up for Freddie's independence during those stays when he witnessed her smothering him.

They looked nothing alike, but there _was_ an older man out there who had things figured out, and who probably thought of him occasionally and sent him best wishes…

Sam had given their orders to their waitress and then leaned across the table to see what was on the page. She smirked. "Who's that? You imaginary friend?"

"That's Gunsmoke," Freddie said with a coy smile.

Her eyebrows lowered and her eyes swept over the name again. "Clayton?" she snorted. Freddie nodded proudly. "Gunsmoke's just a code name. Hey did I tell you it was a _50's One More Time_ where they met?"

Sam shook her head.

Over his well-done burger, Freddie told Sam the full story he'd been told, this time without the gruesome details he'd dwelt on before. It became a story about a serendipitous meeting between one man and one woman who in the end made the best of an ugly, unfair world by making him their priority.

Sam listened as she scarfed down a bacon burger and plate of fries. She chewed with her mouth open and licked her fingers like there were no such things as napkins. Freddie rolled his eyes and threw napkins at her just to make her growl, but the story wasn't interrupted.

Then through one of his onion rings that she was wearing like a mustache, she smiled and said, "So you do gotta dad."

Freddie nodded, slightly giddy at the idea. "Yeah. It's kinda like I do."

Sam rolled her eyes at his softness, but smiled. The onion ring dropped. They laughed. He stole it back and ate it in one bite. She took two more from his plate and kicked back to enjoy the crust off them first. Freddie didn't realize he was starring until she kicked him hard in the shin.

Like him, she had things figured out now. She knew who she wanted to be as a serious girlfriend. That kick was to keep him in line. No mooning over each other in public. Noted. He was just happy he'd got the chance to say it once in the daylight before she'd made up her mind.


	15. Chapter 15: iGo Home

**Chapter 15: iGo Home**

He almost knocked on the door. After taking a moment to process what that meant, he let himself into the apartment. The lights were out. It was quiet. No one was home. He wondered if his mother was at work, and what Gunsmoke was doing if she was.

At first, it was like nothing had ever happened—nothing looked different. But the longer he was there, the more things he started to notice.

After a week away, what struck him first was how _sterile_ it smelled. No wonder Sam always teased him. He'd never noticed it before, but it really _did_ smell like a doctor's office or something in here.

He stood in the middle of the living room, looking around. The carpet had fresh vacuum marks in the fibers. The kitchen counters were uncluttered, scrubbed. There were no dishes in the sink, or even on the draining board. There were fresh flowers in a vase on the dining room table.

After a moment, he went down the hall to his room. The door was closed. He turned on the light and was surprised to find his bed still unmade, the sheets he'd put in the dryer were a bundle in the middle of the mattress, not even folded. Gunsmoke's cot was unmade as well, some of his clothes here and there in the floor. Freddie smirked, recalling how the man had never allowed Marissa in to clean this room during his stays here and had always returned it to its previous state on his own before going.

Freddie started a shower to wash off the sweat and sawdust and when he pulled his shirt over his head, he smelled Sam on it. The smell was probably in his skin by now. The thought made him smile. He hoped it was.

As he showered, he realized he was back to getting two showers a day after being home for five minutes. That was the way of life here, the exact opposite of life at Sam's. He thought about all the little differences between this bathroom and Sam's. There was no blond hair sticking to the counter in this bathroom, no toothpaste splatters on the sink. He didn't have to hold the thing on the faucet, there were no dead granddaddy long legs crushed in the corners, the towels matched and had no bleach stains.

After getting dressed in fresh cloths and brushing his teeth (he'd been making do with mouthwash and toothpaste on his finger,) he heard the front door open. He opened the bathroom door as his mother's laugh drifted into the apartment. It was, like, _real_ laughter. Smiling, Freddie called "Mom?"—consciously _before_ he stepped out so as not to spring himself (his eyes) on her. He barely got a look at the strange image of a smiling-ear-to-ear-Gunsmoke whose arms were filled with brown grocery bags when a shriek hurt his ears and Marissa had him in a vice-grip of a hug.

He returned it. "I missed you, Mom," he said, and he couldn't believe how true it was. She was already checking him over head to foot, looking for injuries, ticks, signs of disease of any kind.

"Are you okay?" she asked, looking into his eyes. He looked for it, but could see nothing in her expression that hinted meeting his eye was hard for her at all. He saw nothing but relief and love in them .With a rush, he needed to hug her again and did.

She clung back then suddenly, "Freddie Benson!" she was shrilling, suddenly the aggressive parent that all of her conferences had taught her to be. She actually _shoved_ him, which was such a surprise, he fell back several steps. "WHERE IN THE WORLD HAVE YOU BEEN?"

"With Sam," he said—looking to Gunsmoke with confusion. "Didn't you tell her?"

The man named Clayton who'd been smiling with his mother five seconds ago was now stoic Gunsmoke again. "She means what took you so long."

"Oh," Freddie laughed—tickled that there was someone who didn't need a translator with Marissa. She had her hands on him again, was smoothing out his shirt, combing his still-damp-hair, peeling back his eyelids to check his pupil dilation. He batted her hands from his face. Old times again.

She pursed her lips, wouldn't meet his eye, admitted reluctantly, "She actually took care of you."

"I was surprised, too." he laughed. Marissa smiled slightly, but then it was gone as her eyes widened and she took his chin in her fingers, "What's this, Fredward?"

"Scruff?" Freddie asked.

"Shave it off before it's a real beard!"

"What's wrong with real beards?"

"They're dirty—ticks hide in them."

Freddie shot a bewildered look to the man in the kitchen—the bearded one—before realizing that this was one of her things. She only thought ticks were in a beard if the beard was on _him_.

_You're unclean._

He swallowed dryly, reminded himself that she couldn't help it and refused to take it personally. She was tense and nervous again, not meeting his eye. She turned away and headed for the kitchen and the groceries to put up there. Gunsmoke caught Freddie's eye and gave him a reassuring kind of look immediately followed by a silent command shot at Marissa.

She paused, turned sheepishly and looked Freddie in the face. He saw embarrassment and heartache swimming around in her eyes. But no, those were just tears. One dripped to her cheek as she admitted with a shake of her head.

"Freddie, the things I said before you left…"

Freddie felt something harden like a reflex. Blast doors closing like Sam's walls rising. He gulped and looked away. Marissa bent forward, twisted to stay in his line of sight. She was shaking but it wasn't with any kind of crazy-woman fire. This was something he'd never really seen before, but had always felt.

"You are my son. _Mine_, and no one else's. You have my father's chin, my grandfather's nose, and when you smile I even see a little bit of Jenny in your dimples. Your eyes may be shaped like his but they are _your_ eyes because Freddie Benson shines out of them and lights up my life."

Warm fire filled Freddie's chest as stinging water filled his eyes—it was all so powerful and embarrassing that he snorted lightly, "Way to be lame, Mom." Gunsmoke even chortled silently.

"Well, it's true," she insisted, smiling despite herself as Gunsmoke shook his head at teenagers.

Marissa pulled Freddie into another hug, dragging his head down to her chest like she'd held him as a child. He went with it, registering vaguely that he'd never take his mother's hugs for granted ever again.

She kissed his damp hair, said against his scalp, "I have always loved you more than anything or anyone—" Freddie's eyes flicked to Gunsmoke. His back was turned. "I'm sorry you felt differently even for a second," Marissa gasped. "The past has just been so close recently—I—"

"Mom, ssshhh," Freddie said, giving her a squeeze. "I get it. It's okay. I know you love me. I love you too…"

…

When Carly was home from school, Freddie slipped over to her apartment. Not only was he due to be there to start sitting up for the show tonight, but she was one of his best friends, and he owed her some explanation.

"Hola!" he called amiably when he stepped into her living room. Spencer was stretched out on his couch, watching TV. The older man lifted his head, smiled hugely, "Hey, long time no see!"

"Yeah, how goes it?"

"Um'Kay." Spencer shrugged. Freddie noticed the sculpture of cell phones in the kitchen. "Hey is this No Signal?"

Spencer rolled off the couch, sprang to his feet, "Yeah! You likes?"

Freddie wandered over to it, and stared at it pensively. It was made entirely out of cell phones ranging from the huge ones from decades ago all the way up to the sleek and sexy Pear Phone. Some of them were shattered with bare chips and wires showing, others looked perfectly fine except that he'd painted the screens to read No Service or have icons of antennas with red X's through them. The pile of cell phones was in the shape of a man's face, his mouth open in a grotesquely huge and twisted scream. His eyes were swirls.

This had been inspired by Freddie's father's final words. _Disobedience must be punished._

Spencer was at his side, watching him apprehensively—an artist eager for feedback. Freddie looked up at him, nodded. "I like it."

"Yeah?"

"It's awesome."

"Thanks,"

"Where's Carly?"

"Upstairs," Spencer answered, his dark eyes snapping to some imperfection on his work that only he could see. He began picking at something as Freddie made his way up to Carly's room. Her door was open, she was on her couch, history book in hand, reading required chapters.

"Freddie!" she cried, closing the book and springing to her feet. Suddenly, she was all up on him, whacking him on the arm with the flat of her palm. It was actually painful.

"Where. Where. You. Today?" she demanded. "And where's Sam? I know you two are in love and I'm _happy_ for you but you can't just DITCH school and for a whole week in a row! What Freddie heard was that they couldn't ditch _her_ for a week.

"We're going tomorrow, promise," he said.

"Oh," Carly lost her stern attitude. "Well, good. I've really missed you guys."

"I'm sorry we ditched you," he said. "And I'm _so sorry_ about all that stuff I said about the show—"

She waved a hand, embarrassed, went back to her couch.

"I just had to deal with some stuff," he explained.

She scoffed, "Sam has told me _that_ much—but she kept saying it's not her business to spread around."

"She was right."

Carly's face was all questions and he couldn't leave it at that. She was too good of a friend. Since she'd told him the story about her mom leaving, he decided to tell her as much as he could without telling her too much. He wandered over to her bed and sat on the corner of it.

"Mom told me about my dad," He said. Now she looked _really_ interested but he chose to ignore that and said,

"He died last Friday."

She gave a start, offered a sincere. "Sorry."

He nodded. A moment passed and she laughed, went over to her vanity table. "Your mom was _freaking_ out all week."

He tried to make his laugh sound not so forced. "Yeah, I went kind of AWOL on her."

"Don't do it again, it could kill her." Carly said as she got on-line.

"I've been informed." He laughed.

"Where's Sam?"

He explained about Julio and how they'd gone with him to build houses, and suddenly, without provocation, he was explaining how Sam was doing it to help her mom out, and how her laziness isn't as bad as she pretended it was. Carly was giggling.

"What?"

"Nothing." She quipped.

"What?" he asked again. His friend swirled her chair around and wagged her dark eyebrows. "You're _gushing_. It sounds like you're crazy about her."

"I am!" he gushed again. She laughed in surprise and Freddie flopped backwards onto the mattress. He pushed on his eyes, a smiled making his ears move back it was so big, "She's _so great_, Carly! I mean, when it's just the two of us she's not mean or gross—she's beautiful!"

"Awwwwe," Carly said. Freddie sat up and Carly had a weird look on her face, like she was looking at puppies in a store window. "Tell me more!"

Freddie realized Sam wouldn't have been giving too many details, wasn't her style. But it was his. Carly was his friend and he was eager to talk about it, to brag, to gush, to show his excitement. Maybe it was girly, but he didn't care. He told Carly all about the little things, the way she didn't whisper in the dark, or the way she smiled when she said the truth, or how she'd finally used that lilac scent because she wanted to smell girly for him.

Carly was in the middle of a long drawn out "awwwwwe" because of that last one when in through the bedroom door sauntered Tough Sam eating salami. She was dressed like she'd spent the day in bed. She stopped when Carly turned big sappy brown eyes on her.

"What?"

"Speak of the devil," Freddie said, standing from the bed. He didn't put his arms around her—in case Carly counted as the public she didn't like displaying affections in front of. Sam looked from Carly's puppy expression to his flushed cheeks and put it all together. She shoved him, "Telling lies about me, Freddifer?"

"No," he said, "I'm telling our best friend the truth about you—_us_." He corrected himself with a gush before he could help it.

Sam tamed a smile and rolled her eyes. "Don't bug me, Benson. I'm enjoying this salami too much."

Carly gave her tomboy friend such a sappy look that Sam actually took a step away from her, but Carly caught her in a tight hug. "I'm so happy for you!" she cried.

Sam gasped for air, "Okay, Carly, geez, it's not that big of a deal."

"Not that big of a deal?" Carly echoed, holding Sam at arm's length to look from her to Freddie. "Sam, _you're in love_! That's a very big deal!"

Sam wouldn't look at anyone, blushed as she admitted, "Yeah, okay, it is."

…

Walking Sam home before the sun went down, she wrapped her arms around him the moment the door was closed behind them and they were alone in the hall. "Think you can stay over tonight?"

"Hmmm," he really liked that idea, but he sighed, "I think my mom needs me to stay home tonight, prove I haven't left her forever."

"Yeah, I guess," she shrugged and he laced his fingers through hers, swung their hands between them. "Besides, I should give you some space."

She rolled her eyes, "I told you that wasn't what it was about—"

"I know." He interrupted, "But I don't want you to get tired of me."

She scoffed, and he pulled her closer. He put his forehead on hers. "I'll miss you, though."

Sam's shining smile suddenly died, her eyes hardened and she shoved him away, kicked him in the shins, "Keep your hands to yourself, ya nub." She said.

Confused, Freddie looked over his shoulder to find that Gunsmoke had stepped out into the hall. He carried his bag in one hand. He was leaving, the jungles of South America were calling.

A smile broke Gunsmoke's features as he looked from Sam to Freddie. "You can really pick 'em, Fred."

Freddie laughed, didn't say it out loud, but _she_ was the one that picked _him_. And he couldn't believe his luck. Sam drifted respectfully around the corner so that Freddie could say his goodbyes.

"So,,," he hooked his thumbs in his pockets. "You're going home?"

Gunsmoke nodded.

"Well, I'm glad you were here," Freddie said. Gunsmoke nodded again.

"Could you—" Freddie cut off, unsure how to continue.

"If you have something to say, just say it."

"I was just going to say that—" Freddie laughed, and to his embarrassment, it was kind of a wet sound. He looked at Gunsmoke. "You're the closest thing to a real dad that I've ever had, and I want you to be in my life more."

Gunsmoke blinked rapidly, but maintained composure.

Something passed between the two men, an understanding that dragged Freddie a step forward and Gunsmoke a step toward him, into a loud hug, palms clapping shoulder blades. Freddie lost all his breath and tears pricked his eyes. Gunsmoke released him with a final tight grip on his shoulders.

Gunsmoke headed to the elevator and Freddie experienced something he hadn't felt in a week, since before Sam revealed who her father was.

He and Sam had something in common again, bad ass fathers. Freddie felt better, a weight lifted. He was okay. He got what he wanted—equality with Sam. He didn't need any more than that.

Gunsmoke rounded the corner, giving a curt nod to Sam as she passed him on her way back to Freddie's side. "Have a good trip," she said with a mock salute. He returned it, one side of his mouth quirked up.

Freddie wrapped his arms around Sam, and tried to imagine what would have happened if it hadn't been this week, of all the weeks in his young life, that he found love.

"You know, you saved my life this week," he said gratefully, taking her hand. He didn't care if he got another bruised shin. He wanted her to know how great a friend she was. To his surprise, she didn't kick him. Or even meet his eye.

"You saved mine," she said lowly.

Freddie's eyebrows came together as he pondered the meaning of that. A week ago, he never would have thought it would be necessary to save Sam Puckett from anything. He'd have put good money on it that Sam could've handled anything with one of her butter socks, one of her kidney punches.

But that was Sam as the world knew her.

He didn't want to think about what could have happened this week if she'd been on her own. Carly being unintentionally judgmental while Pam was even more out-of-whack thanks to Ol' Max, and dentist appointments would've been looming ahead while droopy eyed strangers waited at home… Sam would've had nowhere to go at the same time that the safe life with her father she'd given up was made closer thanks to a stupid school project…

Freddie knew with stomach-dropping certainty that the real Sam (his secret Sam) wouldn't have survived all of that. She would have hardened all the way through.

Suddenly speechless with a dry throat, all he could do was silently thank God for the small miracle of timing.

Sam shook her hand free, glancing shyly from under her thick lashes. Then she gave a little shrug that was anything but casual. But that shrug said it all. She was just returning a favor; they would always be equals.

**FIN.**


End file.
